Pretty Baby (1978)

In 1917, in the red-light district of Storyville, New Orleans, prostitute Hattie (Susan Sarandon) lives with her twelve-year-old daughter Violet (Brooke Shields) in the fancy brothel of Madame Nell, where she works.

Hattie herself was born in a brothel, and Violet sees nothing unusual in her life there. It’s all she’s ever known.

She helps with chores around the place, plays games with the other children of the brothel, and doesn’t mind the rat that runs across the floor of her bedroom.

Bewhiskered photographer Ernest J. Bellocq (Keith Carradine) – nicknamed “Papa” – is a habitué of the whorehouse where he spends his days taking portrait photographs of the women who work there. He becomes fascinated by Violet, a precocious flower of a child who seems as much at home around the Johns as her skipping rope.

Eventually, Madame Nell (Frances Faye) – an opium-smoking, absinthe-drinking, cocaine-snorting, half-crazy harridan who could have stepped right out of Fellini’s Satyricon – auctions Violet’s virginity to a group of middle-aged men and the winner pays the fortune of $400 to spend the night with the girl.

The circumstances change when Hattie – spoiled, vain, selfish, and in many ways more a child than her daughter – gets the chance to marry one of her customers (a wealthy paving contractor from St Louis) and gain respectability. She moves to St Louis and leaves Violet in the brothel alone.

After the red light district falls prey to the reformers, Bellocq marries Violet, but at the end of the film, Hattie (now thoroughly respectable) and her husband return to take the girl against the wishes of Bellocq. In a nice touch, the film ends with Violet’s foster father using a cheap box camera to snap a picture of her and Hattie as they await a train out of New Orleans.

Despite all the controversy surrounding the film at the time of its release, French director Louis Malle went to great lengths to avoid exploiting the lurid aspects of the storyline, with a sensitive screenplay by Polly Platt and superb cinematography from Sven Nykvist, best known as Ingmar Bergman’s cinematographer.

Arguably, the film’s most shocking moment was a nude scene of 12-year-old Shields, which was cut from many releases.

Violet
Brooke Shields
Bellocq
Keith Carradine
Hattie
Susan Sarandon
Nell
Frances Faye
Professor
Antonio Fargas
Red Top
Matthew Anton
Frieda
Diana Scarwid
Josephine
Barbara Steele
Flora
Seret Scott
Gussie
Cheryl Markowitz
Fanny
Susan Manskey
Agnes
Laura Zimmerman
Odette
Miz Mary
Highpockets
Gerrit Graham
Mama Mosebery
Mae Mercer
Alfred Fuller
Don Hood
Ola Mae
Pat Pierre Perkins
Nonny
Von Eric Thomas
Justine
Sasha Holliday
Antonia
Lisa Shames
Harry
Henry Braden
Violet’s First Customer
Don Lutenbacher

Director
Louis Malle