Not a Pretty Picture

Last updated

Not a Pretty Picture
Not a Pretty Picture film poster.jpg
Film poster
Directed by Martha Coolidge
Written byMartha Coolidge
Produced byMartha Coolidge
Starring
  • Michelle Manenti
  • Jim Carrington
  • Anne Mundstuk
Cinematography
Edited by
  • Suzanne Pettit
  • Martha Coolidge
Music byTom Griffith
Production
company
Coolidge Productions
Distributed byFilms Inc.
Release date
  • March 31, 1976 (1976-03-31)(New York City)
Running time
83 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

Not a Pretty Picture is a 1976 American docudrama film. The film was written, produced and directed by Martha Coolidge, marking her narrative feature film directorial debut, after years of working as a documentary filmmaker in the early to mid-1970s. [1] [2] The film recreates Coolidge's experience of being raped by an acquaintance when she was sixteen years old in 1962, then focuses on the aftermath. [3] The film first premiered in March 31, 1976 in New York City. It went on to screen at the 1976 Toronto International Film Festival and in arthouse theaters. In 2022, the film was restored by the Academy Film Archive and The Film Foundation and was given a limited theatrical release.

Contents

Plot

The first part of the film shows a teenage Martha, played by an actor, hanging out with a group of friends and flirting with boys in a car. She then goes back to an apartment with the boys. Coolidge herself periodically breaks the fourth wall to question the actors about their approaches. She also interviews people she was close with at the time to get their recollections of how she acted.

Teenage Martha and her date, Curly, are in a room of the building where the floor is lined with mattresses. Two of their friends are off kissing in another room, while another is drunkenly stumbling around. Curly leads Martha through a hole in the wall to another space, where the assault unfolds. Coolidge the director is shown filming the scene. The camera abruptly cuts to the actors speaking with Coolidge about their choices in staging and acting out the scene. Coolidge and the actor that plays teen Martha share personal stories about rape. The actor playing Curly examines his own participation in a culture that objectifies women, recounting how he used to go to a local college to pick up "pigs," promiscuous girls he could sleep with. [4]

The aftermath of the assault involves teenage Martha opening up to and bonding with her roommate Anne, who is played by Coolidge's real-life former roommate Anne Mundstuk. Anne tries to offer a safe space for teen Martha's trauma.

Cast

Legacy

Director Francis Ford Coppola was impressed by the film and invited Coolidge to work with his production company American Zoetrope, which eventually led to Coolidge directing her studio feature film, Valley Girl. [4]

The film screened in 16mm at the New York's Anthology Film Archives in 2018. Writing about the film for The Village Voice , filmmaker April Wolfe said, "What’s most unnerving about this four-decade-old film is how little has changed in the time since. We are still learning the same lessons Coolidge was trying to impart so long ago — nothing is different." [4] She noted, "In other movies from the Seventies and Eighties, women were employing similar hybrid forms as a means to share their marginalized experiences with a certain amount of distance for the sake of their psyches. Michelle Citron's Daughter Rite (1980), Kay Armatage's Striptease (1980), and Marilú Mallet's Unfinished Diary (1982) all fall into this category." [4] The film has been described as an influence on Jennifer Fox's 2018 film The Tale . [4] In 2020, Richard Brody of The New Yorker included Not a Pretty Picture in his list of the Sixty-Two Best Documentaries of All Time. [5]

In 2022, The Academy Film Archive in partnership with Martin Scorsese's Film Foundation restored Not a Pretty Picture, with funding provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation. The restoration premiered on December 8, 2022, at the Academy Museum in Hollywood. In 2023, Not a Pretty Picture screened at Berlinale, selected by Céline Sciamma. [6]

In August 2024, the film was released on Blu-ray and DVD by the Criterion Collection. [7]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean-Luc Godard</span> French and Swiss film director (1930–2022)

Jean-Luc Godard was a French and Swiss film director, screenwriter, and film critic. He rose to prominence as a pioneer of the French New Wave film movement of the 1960s, alongside such filmmakers as François Truffaut, Agnès Varda, Éric Rohmer and Jacques Demy. He was arguably the most influential French filmmaker of the post-war era. According to AllMovie, his work "revolutionized the motion picture form" through its experimentation with narrative, continuity, sound, and camerawork.

<i>All That Heaven Allows</i> 1955 film by Douglas Sirk

All That Heaven Allows is a 1955 American drama romance film directed by Douglas Sirk, produced by Ross Hunter, and adapted by Peg Fenwick from a novel by Edna L. Lee and Harry Lee. It stars Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson in a tale about the social complications that arise following the development of a romance between a well-to-do widow and a younger man, who owns a tree nursery. In 1995, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

Cinéma vérité is a style of documentary filmmaking developed by Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch, inspired by Dziga Vertov's theory about Kino-Pravda. It combines improvisation with use of the camera to unveil truth or highlight subjects hidden behind reality. It is sometimes called observational cinema, if understood as pure direct cinema: mainly without a narrator's voice-over. There are subtle, yet important, differences between terms expressing similar concepts. Direct cinema is largely concerned with the recording of events in which the subject and audience become unaware of the camera's presence: operating within what Bill Nichols, an American historian and theoretician of documentary film, calls the "observational mode", a fly on the wall. Many therefore see a paradox in drawing attention away from the presence of the camera and simultaneously interfering in the reality it registers when attempting to discover a cinematic truth.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Cassavetes</span> Greek-American filmmaker and actor (1929–1989)

John Nicholas Cassavetes was a Greek-American filmmaker and actor. He began as an actor in film and television before helping to pioneer modern American independent cinema as a writer and director, often self-financing, producing, and distributing his own films. He received nominations for three Academy Awards, two BAFTA Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, and an Emmy Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Martha Coolidge</span> American filmmaker (born 1946)

Martha Coolidge is an American film director and former President of the Directors Guild of America. She has directed such films as Valley Girl,Real Genius and Rambling Rose.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barbara Loden</span> American actress and film and stage director (1932–1980)

Barbara Ann Loden was an American actress and director of film and theater. Richard Brody of The New Yorker described Loden as the "female counterpart to John Cassavetes".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mani Haghighi</span> Iranian film director, screenwriter and actor

Mani Haghighi is an Iranian film director, writer, film producer, and actor. Haghighi started making movies in 2001.

<i>Just Another Girl on the I.R.T.</i> 1992 film by Leslie Harris

Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. is a 1992 American drama film written, produced, and directed by Leslie Harris. The film follows Chantel, a Black teenager living in the New York City projects. The film addresses a variety of contemporary social and political issues including teenage pregnancy, abortion, racism, poverty, and HIV/AIDS. Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. is Harris' first and only feature film to date. The film premiered at the 1992 Toronto International Film Festival and later screened at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Prize. Ariyan A. Johnson earned an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Actress.

<i>Down and Out in America</i> 1986 American film

Down and Out in America is a 1986 American documentary film directed by Lee Grant. The documentary won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film at the 59th Academy Awards, tied with Artie Shaw: Time Is All You've Got.

<i>Joy of Sex</i> (film) 1984 film by Martha Coolidge

Joy of Sex is a 1984 American sex comedy film directed by Martha Coolidge. It was written by Kathleen Rowell and J.J. Salter, based on the sex manual by Alex Comfort.

<i>Compensation</i> (film) 1999 American film

Compensation is a 1999 independent drama film produced, co-edited and directed by Zeinabu irene Davis and written by Marc Arthur Chéry. The film is about two parallel love stories set in turn-of-the-century and present-day Chicago, with both stories concerning a relationship between a deaf woman and a hearing man. The story is inspired by the 1906 poem of the same name from early African-American writer Paul Laurence Dunbar. The film stars Michelle A. Banks and John Earl Jelks in the leading roles. The early part of the story is shot like a silent film. Though the film was not released until 1999, filming took place in 1993.

The Martha's Vineyard Film Festival (MVFF) is an annual film festival founded in 2001 and held in West Tisbury, Massachusetts, on the island of Martha's Vineyard. The festival takes place in March. The MVFF also produces a summer film series in July and August, and special events at other times of the year. Annually, the festival screens more than 35 films.

<i>Portrait of Jason</i> 1967 film by Shirley Clarke

Portrait of Jason is a 1967 documentary film directed, produced and edited by Shirley Clarke and starring Jason Holliday.

Josephine Decker is an English–born American filmmaker. Films she has directed include Butter on the Latch (2013), Thou Wast Mild and Lovely (2014), Madeline's Madeline (2018), Shirley (2020), and The Sky is Everywhere (2022). She also co-directed the documentary Bi the Way (2008) with Brittany Blockman.

<i>Lumière</i> (film) 1976 French film

Lumière is a French drama film written and directed by Jeanne Moreau. The semi-autobiographical film is about the friendship between four actresses. It is credited as being one of the first films to focus on female friendship.

<i>Thou Wast Mild and Lovely</i> 2014 experimental thriller film

Thou Wast Mild and Lovely is a 2014 experimental thriller film written and directed by Josephine Decker and starring Joe Swanberg, Sophie Traub, and Robert Longstreet.

<i>Cane River</i> (film) 1982 American film by Horace B. Jenkins

Cane River is a 1982 American romantic drama film that was lost until its rediscovery in 2013 and its subsequent re-release in 2018 and beyond. It was written, produced, and directed by Horace B. Jenkins. The film features the lives of African Americans in the US state of Louisiana. While the film premiered in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1982, Horace Jenkins died before the film could be released in New York City and beyond. The film was considered lost until a negative was recovered in 2013.

<i>Losing Ground</i> (1982 film) 1982 American film by Kathleen Collins

Losing Ground is a semiautobiographical 1982 American drama film written and directed by Kathleen Collins, and starring Seret Scott, Bill Gunn and Duane Jones. It is the first feature-length drama directed by an African-American woman since the 1920s and won First Prize at the Figueira da Foz International Film Festival in Portugal.

<i>Minding the Gap</i> 2018 documentary film directed by Bing Liu

Minding the Gap is a 2018 documentary film directed by Bing Liu and produced by Liu and Diane Moy Quon through Kartemquin Films. It chronicles the lives and friendships of three young men growing up in Rockford, Illinois, united by their love of skateboarding. The film received critical acclaim, won the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Breakthrough Filmmaking at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, and was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 91st Academy Awards.

<i>Killing Time</i> (1979 film) Short film by Fronza Woods

Killing Time is a 1979 American short black comedy film written and directed by Fronza Woods, who also stars in the film under the pseudonym Sage Brush, and produced by the Women's Interart Center.

References

  1. ↑ "Martha Coolidge profile". SheMadeIt.org. Archived from the original on February 2, 2014.
  2. ↑ 10 Best New Hollywood Movies Directed by Women, Ranked|Collider
  3. ↑ "Not a Pretty Picture". Turner Classic Movies .
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Wolfe, April (June 7, 2018). "Four Decades On, Martha Coolidge's "Not a Pretty Picture" Is Still Paving the Way". The Village Voice.
  5. ↑ Brody, Richard (October 14, 2020). "Sixty-two of the Best Documentaries of All Time". The New Yorker. ISSN   0028-792X . Retrieved October 9, 2024.
  6. ↑ "2023 Retrospective "Young at Heart – Coming of Age at the Movies"". Berlinale.
  7. ↑ "Not a Pretty Picture". Criterion. Retrieved October 9, 2024.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.