Friday Marathon: Marilyn Monroe
During the week it's hard to find time to watch movies. On Fridays I try to make up for that with a 6-hour deep dive. I hope my destinations might help inspire your own journeys.
Don't Bother to Knock
USA, 1952, d. Roy Ward Baker, 1h16m, Amazon/iTunes
This psychological thriller is an early gem for Marilyn; a rare opportunity to see her playing against "type". Here she is a deeply troubled and forlorn character. You can't look away from her because you can tell something is just not right. It's no wonder Blonde (see below) uses this film to depict her early career and untapped dramatic potential. Mental health disorders come into play in this movie, and the movie is bound to have aged a little in this regard, but I honestly think the movie has its heart in the right place.
The Misfits
USA, 1961, d. John Huston, 2h4m, Amazon/iTunes
Marilyn's last screen appearance, as well as the last for Clark Gable (who looks about twenty years older here than he really was). Arthur Miller - Monroe's husband at the time - wrote the story this film is based on, and the story is so adult and thoughtful that it feels like it could only have come from a brief period when major stars were appearing in weighty prestige dramas.
Monroe plays a woman who has moved to Reno to get divorced - a practice I had to google to fully understand - and since she has time to kill there establishing her "residency", she decides to hang out with some local cowboys for fun. The center of their attention, she brings out the toxicity and fragility of these uber-masculine men, and cuts through the bullshit of their dying sub-culture. Mostly a film about words that cut deep, the climactic mustang hunting sequence is astonishing.
Blonde
USA, 2022, d. Andrew Dominik, 2h47m, Now streaming on Netflix
Based on a novel by Joyce Carol Oates, this is an unusual biopic in that it weaves real episodes from Marilyn's life, with highly speculative and even patently false ones. These fictions do not save the movie from the typical biopic trap of trying to find a single story and through-line to a many-faceted life. A distillation of a distillation, every sequence seems to reduce her to one character trait: she never knew her father. Ana de Armas gives a striking performance, and the filmmakers revel in recreating every iconic image of the star, but ultimately the only scenes that really shine are the ones where she is not being crushed by the weight of her stardom and certain invented traumas. These scenes can unfortunately be counted on one hand.
