Sarandon and Malle must have had a good working relationship because he also used her in his film, Atlantic City in 1980. In the opening scene, we see a closeup of Violet (Shields) watching as her mother Hattie (Susan Sarandon)-one of the house whores-gives birth to a baby boy. I read similar accounts of such a district in Chicago in Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America’s Soul. They tended to be named after a particular alderman, whose role it was to placate a morally-outraged and fearful public. Such places, which were seen in many other big cities as well, were designated vice zones-presumably to keep them “contained”. The story takes place in the 1917 New Orleans Storyville district. Like most Malle films, a coherent plot is not paramount and, in this case, we are really seeing a series of vignettes expressing the human condition in a particular time and place. Beyond that, this film features one of America’s most breathtaking beauties, Brooke Shields. After Lewis Carroll’s Alice and Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, Pretty Baby (1977) is perhaps the most popular metaphor symbolizing the cult of the girl child.
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