Pretty Baby

Pretty Baby is a 1978 historical fiction drama film directed by Louis Malle. The screenplay was written by Polly Platt. The title is inspired by the Tony Jackson song, "Pretty Baby", which is used in the soundtrack. Although the film was mostly praised by critics, it was controversial at the time, especially for its treatment of child prostitution and the scenes of the nude Brooke Shields, who was 12 years old at the time. In 1917, during the last months of legal prostitution in Storyville, the red-light district of New Orleans, Louisiana, Hattie is a prostitute working at an elegant brothel run by the elderly, cocaine-sniffing Madame Nell. Hattie has a 12-year-old daughter, Violet, who also lives at the house, and has just given birth to a baby boy. When photographer Ernest J. Bellocq comes by with his camera, Hattie and Violet are the only ones awake. He asks to be allowed to take photographs of the women. Madame Nell only agrees after he offers to pay. Bellocq becomes a fixture in...