In the documentary on Netflix all the judicial stages are retraced. But the hypotheses remain two: true suicide or mistake in the dose of pills and barbiturates
Even after 60 years Marilyn is still Marilyn. No need for the surname, just her double MM, just that sweet, sensual but innocent face and that storm of melancholy always on the verge of falling on her eyes. That’s why she sees with pleasure, nothing to do with the vulgarity of gossip, a document like “The Secrets of Marilyn Monroe” now on Netflix with the original title “The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe”, subtitled the tapes never heard before. Something shocking? No, more or less only the revelations that in recent decades, at least since 1982, have followed one another in American press and judicial inquiries, those that have been able to investigate better after the disappearance of some citizens above all suspicion. Directed by Emma Cooper, it is based on the tapes recorded and cataloged with precision, on the telephone calls of the investigation by Anthony Summers, who interviewed as many as 650 people among friends and acquaintances of the diva who disappeared at the age of 36 after having enchanted the mass media with the photo of the skirt that rises in the subway wind of the Manhattan subway. The voices heard are often dubbed, the images too (Billy Wilder, for example, is often from behind but says things he has told the press), but overall the results of this psycho-cinematic investigation (which appeared on Vanity Fair) is interesting because it is the sum of all the questions we have always asked ourselves about the death of the good actress who has never won an Oscar. In the audio you can hear the voices of Huston, the relatives of the psychiatrist Ralph Greenson, who died before his unhappy patient, Eunice Murray, his housekeeper often portrayed at the time on the threshold of that modest house and that unmade bed who heard her last sighs and the latest phone calls from the diva and many others, bringing back to mind the era of the great American films and the great nuclear and cold war fears.
It is strange that they are “costumed” actors playing the actress’s intimacies Some like it hot e Niagarafrom Men prefer blondes e How to marry a millionaire, but admitting this strangeness of history and confidentiality, one is still captivated and a little bewildered by the sincerity of some opinions and statements. And also from some videos that seem unedited, such as the one of the wedding party with Arthur Miller (defined for some reason a screenwriter and not a playwright, while quoting Death of a traveling salesman), an expiring marriage also for ingratitude, and other clips of a life that started in black and white, cut off at the most beautiful by the ingratitude of a career started as an orphan, or rather a foundling, waif, although there was a mother in the nursing home, which was then the subject of media attention. We know many intimacies of this unhappy Marilyn, but the document has the merit of offering us the language and the language of a human story that appears generic and instead is unique, even if there have been many human sacrifices of Hollywood Babylon, not by chance in origin called Hollywood land. The definitive judicial truth is not there and never will be – translated: there is no evidence to say that it was a murder – so the yellow remains unsolved, but the set of evidence shows how much Marilyn needed, beyond to sleeping pills, of famous affections. From Joe DiMaggio, although married when his sports career was at the limit, to Miller, to Lee Strasberg and family with the Actor’s Studio, to the famous and double love story with the most famous and powerful brothers of the 1960s, the Kennedys , President John Fitzgerald and his brother Bob, both excellent corpses of a sad American season of which Marilyn was the dramatic preface.
But the hypotheses remain two: true suicide or mistake in the dose of pills and barbiturates, a diction that was often used at the time when the bedside tables of the most famous actresses were told. Many things have been written and said about Marilyn, many films have been made, many books written such as the beautiful one by Joyce Carol Oates published in Italy by Nave di Teseo (“Blonde”), but her myth and legend remain intact, as part of his cinema. First of her, for her career that must be reconsidered as that of a great actress not sufficiently considered, proof of this is her latest performance in her Move away; second for the charm of the silent existential unhappiness, the insatiable hunger for affection that appears evident today and yesterday, despite the disguise in comedy, technicolor and Cinemascope of Fox, the major that had him under contract in the first half of his short but brilliant career . Yet this of his death, that August 4, 1962 in Los Angeles, is a crime story and in the Netflix film there is a lot of talk about the bond with the Kennedys, heir to a father-wasting woman in the world of cinematic power, and of Peter Lawford who acted as a messenger. of love by granting the intimacy of his home for secret meetings. Of course there is no solution or it is almost banal: Marilyn as the sacrificial victim of men who have used her and who often confess their sins, without great remorse. Listening to her and her friends, her and her husbands, her and her lovers, her and her characters, her and her partners like Jane Russell, one cannot help but make a pact of blood, affection and love with the actress. of friendship, we realize that we have always loved her and not only for her films even if, as the last line of her cult says, Nobody’s perfect.
May 11, 2022 (change May 11, 2022 | 08:05)
© Time.News