Not a Pretty Picture

Name: Not a Pretty Picture
Genre: Crime, Drama
Released: 1976
Duration: 83 min
Cast: Reed Birney, James Carrington, Martha Coolidge, John Fedinatz, Diana Gold

Martha Coolidge19761h 23mCrime, Drama

Why we chose it

Martha Coolidge was raped when she was sixteen, and years later she had actors re-enact that evening for the camera while she stood in the shot with them, stopping scene after scene. The young woman who plays her had been through something similar, and Coolidge didn’t have to look far to find her.

Synopsis

In 1962, Curly heads to a party in New York with a group of friends, sixteen-year-old Martha among them. In a borrowed flat he leads her into the next room and won’t leave her alone. Twelve years later two actors play out that night in a New York loft dressed to look like the period, and between takes they sit down and argue over what the girl in the scene could have done and what she couldn’t.