''Not a Pretty Picture'' is a 1976 American

docudrama Docudrama (or documentary drama) is a genre of television show, television and feature film, film, which features Drama (film and television), dramatized Historical reenactment, re-enactments of actual events. It is described as a hybrid of docu ...

film. The film was written, produced and directed by

Martha Coolidge Martha Coolidge (born August 17, 1946) 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.'' Early life Coolidge was born in ...

, marking her narrative

feature film directorial debut This is a list of film directorial debuts in chronological order. The films and dates referred to are a director's first commercial cinematic release. Many filmmakers have directed works which were not commercially released, for example early work ...

, after years of working as a documentary filmmaker in the early to mid-1970s. 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. The film first premiered in March 31, 1976 in New York City. It went on to screen at the

1976 Toronto International Film Festival The 1st Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) took place at Windsor Arms Hotel, Toronto, Ontario, Canada between October 18 and October 24, 1976. Initially its name was ''Festival of Festivals'', which remained until 1994 after which it becam ...

and in

arthouse An art film, arthouse film, or specialty film is an independent film aimed at a niche market rather than a mass market audience. It is "intended to be a serious, artistic work, often experimental and not designed for mass appeal", "made prima ...

theaters. In 2022, the film was restored by the

Academy Film Archive The Academy Film Archive is part of the Academy Foundation, established in 1944 with the purpose of organizing and overseeing the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' educational and cultural activities, including the preservation of mot ...

and

The Film Foundation The Film Foundation is a US-based non-profit organization dedicated to film preservation and the exhibition of restored and classic cinema. It was founded by director Martin Scorsese and several other leading filmmakers in 1990. The foundation r ...

and was given a

limited theatrical release __FORCETOC__ Limited theatrical release is a film distribution strategy of releasing a new film in a few cinemas across a country, typically art house theaters in major metropolitan markets. Since 1994, a limited theatrical release in the Unite ...

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 The fourth wall is a performance convention in which an invisible, imaginary wall separates actors from the audience. While the audience can see through this "wall", the convention assumes the actors act as if they cannot. From the 16th centu ...

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 Culture ( ) is a concept that encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and Social norm, norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, Social norm, customs, capabilities, Attitude (psychology), attitudes ...

that objectifies women, recounting how he used to go to a local college to pick up "pigs,"

promiscuous Promiscuity is the practice of engaging in sexual activity frequently with different partners or being indiscriminate in the choice of sexual partners. The term can carry a moral judgment. A common example of behavior viewed as promiscuous by man ...

girls he could sleep with. 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 The term safe space refers to places "intended to be free of bias, conflict, criticism, or potentially threatening actions, ideas, or conversations", according to Merriam-Webster. It is a place where marginalized groups can discuss issues pert ...

for teen Martha's trauma.

Cast

*Michele Manenti as Martha at 16 *Jim Carrington as Curly *Anne Mundstuk as herself *

Reed Birney Reed Birney (born September 11, 1954) is an American actor. Birney is known for his performances on stage and screen often acting on and off Broadway. Birney gained acclaim in 2016 for his role in '' The Humans'' winning the Tony Award for Best ...

as Fred *John Fedinatz as West Virginia *Diana Gold as Jane *Stephen Laurier as Brian *Lillah McCarthy as Nancy *Janet Morrison as Bunny *Melissa Murdock as Leah *Hal Studer as Cullen *

Amy Wright Amy Wright is an American actress and former model. She has appeared in such films as '' The Deer Hunter'', '' Breaking Away'', '' The Accidental Tourist'', '' Hard Promises'', '' Crossing Delancey'', and '' Miss Firecracker''. She is the wido ...

as Cindy

Legacy

Director

Francis Ford Coppola Francis Ford Coppola ( ; born April 7, 1939) is an American filmmaker. He is considered one of the leading figures of the New Hollywood and one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. List of awards and nominations received by Francis Ford Coppo ...

was impressed by the film and invited Coolidge to work with his production company

American Zoetrope American Zoetrope (also known as Omni Zoetrope from 1977 to 1980 and Zoetrope Studios from 1980 until 1991) is a privately run American film production company, centered in San Francisco, California and founded by Francis Ford Coppola and Georg ...

, which eventually led to Coolidge directing her studio feature film, ''

Valley Girl A valley girl is a socioeconomic, linguistic, and youth subcultural stereotype and stock character originating during the 1980s: any materialistic upper-middle-class young woman, associated with unique vocal and California dialect features, f ...

.'' The film screened in

16mm 16 mm film is a historically popular and economical gauge of film. 16 mm refers to the width of the film (about inch); other common film gauges include 8 mm and 35 mm. It is generally used for non-theatrical (e.g., industrial, ...

at the New York's

Anthology Film Archives Anthology Film Archives is an international center for the film preservation, preservation, film studies, study, and film distribution, exhibition of film and video, with a particular focus on independent film, independent, experimental film, ex ...

in 2018. Writing about the film for ''

The Village Voice ''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture publication based in Greenwich Village, New York City, known for being the country's first Alternative newspaper, alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf (publisher), Dan Wolf, ...

'', 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." 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 Kay Armatage (born 1943) is a Canadian filmmaker, former programmer at the Toronto International Film Festival and Professor emerita at the University of Toronto's Cinema Studies Institute and Women & Gender Studies Institute. Though she attained ...

's ''Striptease'' (1980), and Marilú Mallet's ''Unfinished Diary'' (1982) all fall into this category." The film has been described as an influence on Jennifer Fox's 2018 film ''

The Tale ''The Tale'' is a 2018 American drama (film and television), drama film written and directed by Jennifer Fox (documentary filmmaker), Jennifer Fox and starring Laura Dern, Ellen Burstyn, Jason Ritter, Elizabeth Debicki, Isabelle Nélisse, Common ...

''. In 2020,

Richard Brody Richard Brody (born January 22, 1958) is an American film critic, filmmaker and author. Background Brody grew up in Roslyn, New York. He is Jewish and has personally identified as an atheist. Brody attended Princeton University, receiving a B ...

of ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...

'' included ''Not a Pretty Picture'' in his list of the Sixty-Two Best Documentaries of All Time. 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 The Berlin International Film Festival (), usually called the Berlinale (), is an annual film festival held in Berlin, Germany. Founded in 1951 and originally run in June, the festival has been held every February since 1978 and is one of Europ ...

, selected by

Céline Sciamma Céline Sciamma (; born 12 November 1978) is a French screenwriter and film director. She wrote and directed '' Water Lilies'' (2007), '' Tomboy'' (2011), '' Girlhood'' (2014), '' Portrait of a Lady on Fire'' (2019), and '' Petite Maman'' (2021). ...

. In August 2024, the film was released on Blu-ray and DVD by the

Criterion Collection The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films". A "sister company" of arthouse film distributo ...

References

External links

*
Martha Coolidge interview about making of the film
at

Filmmaker Filmmaking or film production is the process by which a Film, motion picture is produced. Filmmaking involves a number of complex and discrete stages, beginning with an initial story, idea, or commission. Production then continues through screen ...

''Not a Pretty Picture'': An Act of Reckoning
an essay by

Molly Haskell Molly Clark Haskell (born September 29, 1939)Aitken, Ian, ed. (2006)''Encyclopedia of Documentary Film, Volume 2'' New York: Routledge. p. 541. . is an American film critic and author. She contributed to '' The Village Voice''—first as a ...

at the

{{Martha Coolidge 1976 directorial debut films 1976 drama films 1976 films 1976 independent films American drama films American docudrama films American feminist films American independent films American films based on actual events 1970s feminist films Films about rape in the United States Films directed by Martha Coolidge 1970s English-language films 1970s American films