The fate of Marilyn Monroe, whose life is at the center of the film. Blonde hair, broadcast since this Wednesday on Netflix, completely obscured his talent. Over the years, what made this actress genius, her impeccable comedic timing and the subtlety of her performances, has been forgotten, erased.
Blonde hair, from Joyce Carol Oates’s novel, only reinforces this sentiment. Fictional evocation of the life of the famous actress, this film directed by Andrew Dominik (The murder of Jesse James) he goes through, taking many liberties with reality, the main stages of his career. Because Andrew Dominik’s goal is to deconstruct the icon of the 7th Art, transforming his life into a horror movie, of which he keeps only the traumatic episodes, from sexual violence to abortions.
“The film left me angry, but also sad, because it will surely form in the minds of many viewers an image [fausse] of Monroe. There are many scenes that present her with a total lack of autonomy over her life and her body, ”outraged the American journalist Marya E. Gates.
“It undermines her achievements and perpetuates the cliché of Marilyn Monroe as a wounded woman waiting for a savior, not the deeply intelligent and resilient woman she was.”
“Killed by the System”
For Julie Escamez, host of the podcast stop the camera. Marilyn Monroe had “the fate of the cool, complex blonde women in Alfred Hitchcock’s movies”: “except that instead of being killed by men, she was killed by the system in which she was trapped.” Composite system finally for these men who had taken him to the top,” he laments. “So it was much easier to make a shiny paper image without any rough edges.”
Because for 60 years its history has been evoked in the same way, and above all it arouses a sick curiosity. Both in literature and in film and television, whatever the medium, the memory of Marilyn Monroe is reduced to the men she loved, her romance with John F. Kennedy, or the innumerable theories raised by the her death. Overshadowing her career.
Despite her contributions to American comedy and drama, Marilyn Monroe is today, above all, the symbol of consumerism. The Authentic Brands Group, a company specializing in the exploitation of the image of deceased celebrities, owns the rights to her image. It has been used for decades in many low-end derivative products (mugs, ashtrays). According to Marya E. Gates, the new movie Blonde hair accentuates this devaluation of the image of Marilyn Monroe and constitutes “one of the most shocking exploitations of her heritage”.
Russian literature
Marilyn Monroe was, however, a complex personality, a lover of poetry and Russian literature. Politically committed to the left, she fought against racial segregation, McCarthyism and the omnipotence of the Hollywood studios. She also broke her contract with 20th Century Fox to become in 1954 one of the first actresses, after Mary Pickford and Ida Lupino, to build her own production company. In 1957, she released her first independent production, The prince and the dancer.
“He fought for more control over the projects he received and demanded a salary commensurate with his aura. If he had lived longer, he would have prospered outside the studio system and surely would have made amazing movies in the 1970s,” says Marya E. doors
“Without necessarily being a trailblazer, Marilyn Monroe seemed very lucid about where she had set foot and what it took to be considered believable, which is why even after several movies she took acting lessons,” moderates Julie Escamez.
In 1955, Marilyn Monroe traveled to New York, where she had studied the “Method”, a name given to dramatic art professor Constantin Stanislavski’s acting principles, which consist not of acting well, but of playing in tune, supported by the impulse of the Body. She was fully aware of her aura on screen and had assimilated the rules of the media to build her own public image, with the help of photographer Milton H. Greene.
A great comedic actress.
Marilyn Monroe also played with her image in each of her films. “She was one of those introverted actresses in real life who used her sensitivity and fragility as a hallmark of her on-screen identity, no matter how comedic her character was (some like it hot, men prefer blondes) or tragic (The misfits)”, analyzes Julie Escamez.
And the specialist adds: “Marilyn Monroe represents that archetype of the girlish woman, so beloved at the time, that a man had to save, sometimes against himself, with which certain directors like Billy Wilder have known how to play perfectly. What he contributed What makes it emerge is essentially this wit coupled with a surprising intelligence, often contained in a very expressive gaze.” This intelligence was also supported by her “vis comica”, her innate comic strength:
“Marilyn Monroe was a great comedic actress for me, first because she knew how to make people laugh, but also because she played with her physique a lot!” adds the critic. “She was the opposite of vulgar, despite what some men like Hitchcock have said, that you read ‘sex on her face.’ subtlety about it”.
self-mockery
Subtlety reinforced by an incredible sense of self-mockery, which allowed her to create on screen “the ultimate version of the ‘blonde’ ditzy, an archetype as old as Hollywood,” recalls Marya E. Gates. Created from scratch for the screen, the figure of Marilyn Monroe is in line with her contemporary Judy Holliday, a specialist in the roles of mindless blondes all in self-mockery, from whom she takes certain tics of language and acting mimicry.
“Like Judy Holliday, Marilyn Monroe played on the image of the giddy blonde and subverted expectations with comedic timing and an ability to imbue her characters with inner richness despite their outgoing appearance,” says Marya E. Gates. . “Today we would be surprised to see some of her best comedic roles again, since her writing systematically eluded the a priori of potiche to make them essential elements of the script,” adds Julie Escamez:
They’ve both played characters that may seem ridiculous, but they’re far less so than their male counterparts.”
Inspired by the theater
Marilyn Monroe also had that ability to transcend all the scenarios that were presented to her, even the ones she didn’t like, like the one with The river of no returnconsidered one of his best films.
“Many actors are talented, but few have had a screen presence like Marilyn Monroe, who was like herself before she became a character in a movie,” says Julie Skim.
The “Method” helped her in this process, and her acting coaches Natasha Lytess and Paula Strasberg always followed her on the sets. “She started studying ‘Method’ in 1955 and you can see a change in the way she acts,” says Marya E. Gates. She “she started looking for roles with more psychological depth. Even her comedies became more dramatic, like Bus stop (1956), which combines comedy and drama”.
Between comedy and drama
“Bus stop shows the depth he can bring to a complex character,” enthuses Marya E. Gates. “Director Joshua Logan once said that his ability to blend comedy and tragedy reminded him of Charlie Chaplin.” That’s for a similar reason as that Julie Escamez is so moved by the Marilyn Monroe of misfits:
“When Marilyn Monroe is drunk in the movie, she really appears to be drunk, the same for her other moods, joy, sadness, anticipation… Which gives her a much larger palette of emotions than for her other films. The misfits It’s a little less codified than the others, perhaps because it was written by Arthur Miller, whom she divorced a year earlier.”
“Perhaps it was in her dramatic films where she gave her best, because they corresponded to her daily mood: melancholy, sometimes despair, but above all the desire to be loved and to see her sensitivity respected,” continues Julie. Escámez. “The porousness of the boundaries between the dramatic characters she embodied and her personality surely reinforced her confusion by contributing to the tragic aspect of the icon she was and remains.”
Source: BFM TV
