BLONDE NETFLIX. Ana de Armas transforms into Norma Jean/Marilyn Monroe in Blonde, a fake biopic about the Hollywood star. But what is true, what is false in the Netflix movie? Decryption.
[Mis à jour le 28 septembre 2022 à 11h36] Hollywood has accustomed us to faithfully transcribing (or at least that’s the impression we got) the lives of the great characters in our history. Blonde is an exception. While you might think it’s a Marilyn Monroe biopic, it’s not. The Netflix movie is the film adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’ novel. It is not a strict transcription of the events experienced by the movie star, but rather an experimental and sensory portrait of the woman behind the icon. Norma Jean behind Marilyn Monroe. The fragility and pain behind fame and glamour.
Blonde seeks to plunge the viewer into Norma Jean’s ordeal as into a nightmare, altering historical reality in the process. Some events are relatively faithful to the story that we know of Marilyn Monroe. Some are invented (or at least are not proven), others are completely omitted (the film passes in particular on the fact that she was able to oppose the studios, that she set up her own production company or on his struggles for societal change). Everything is romanticized. Violent, sulphurous, cruel, this rereading of the star will certainly not leave you indifferent. But if you want to discover the entire life of the actress in detail, go your way, this is not the subject of the Netflix film. Below, we decrypt the true from the false, between Blonde and Marilyn Monroe.
- Was Marilyn Monroe’s mother really committed to a psychiatric hospital? Yes. Gladys Pearl Baker Mortenson Monroe made several stays in psychiatric hospitals, suffering from schizophrenic disorders and paranoid delusions. The one who was called Norma Jeane at the time grew up in an orphanage and then in a foster family.
- Did Marilyn Monroe know her father? It would seem not. Her mother’s second husband, Martin Edward Mortensen, is named as her official father on her birth certificate, with a spelling error. However, Gladys and Mortensen were separated more than a year before Marilyn Monroe was born. In 2021, a DNA analysis taken from samples of the actress at the time of her autopsy reveals that her biological father would be Charles Stanley Gifford, her mother’s superior with whom she had an affair.
- Was Marilyn Monroe in trouble with Charlie Chaplin’s son? Nobody knows, and it’s part of the elements of Blonde that are most likely borrowed from fiction. Rumors of a romance between Marilyn Monroe and Charlie Chaplin Jr. on the one hand, and Edward G. Robinson Jr. on the other, do indeed exist, but nothing is official or confirmed. The mention of a threesome involving them all seems well and truly romanticized. What is certain, however, is that, for the time, the actress had much freer morals and embraced her sexuality more than other actresses.
- Did Marilyn Monroe have miscarriages and abortions? Yes. Marilyn Monroe is said to have had at least two miscarriages in the late 1950s and early 1960s. She also allegedly revealed to a friend that she had an abortion, but it is not known if she was “forced” to have an abortion, as we can see it in the movie Blonde. Let’s not forget that it can also be a metaphor for the hold that the Hollywood system had on the actress, both on her private life and on her body and her career.
- Did Marilyn Monroe have an affair with JFK ? What is certain is that Marilyn Monroe sang her sensual “Happy Birthday Mr. President” on May 19, 1962. That was enough to fuel the rumours. Two witnesses, however, confirm the connection between the actress and the American president in two books, released in 1970 and 1977. Whether their interviews took place as in the film, again, we do not know.
- His marriages. As Blonde shows, Marilyn Monroe was indeed married to Joe DiMaggio (mentioned as the ex-Athlete) and Arthur Miller (the Playwright). However, it is difficult to know how much the intimacy of these two marriages is romanticized in the Netflix film. We know, however, that her union with DiMaggio was eventful, punctuated by numerous disputes related to her career (and the famous scene of the dress in Seven years of reflection), while the one with Arthur Miller was, for a while and until her miscarriage at least, more peaceful. Note also that Marilyn Monroe’s first marriage, before she became an actress, is not shown in the film.
- Several omissions in Blonde. The film Blonde also omits certain parts of Marilyn Monroe’s life, in particular her professional successes. The actress has established herself over the years as a great actress awarded a Golden Globe, but also as a powerful personality in Hollywood who ended up having a say in the films in which she played, even if she was always paid far less than a star of her stature deserved. She also set up her own production company in the 1950s. She also fought in the political sphere, notably for civil rights.
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Synopsis – From her difficult childhood to her meteoric rise and her complicated love stories, who really was Marilyn Monroe? Blonde paints a portrait between fiction and reality, between the star she was on stage and the woman she was in her intimacy.
Blonde is one of the highly anticipated films of 2022. This faux-biopic offers an intimate and sulphurous portrait of Marilyn Monroe, while taking great liberties with the actress’ life. The feature film was released on Netflix this Wednesday, September 28, 2022. It is therefore possible to watch it (remember, however, that it lasts 2h46).
Blonde will definitely not appeal to everyone. Andrew Dominik’s film has certainly divided the critics but is definitely worth a look. Remember that this is not a classic biopic or a documentary on Marilyn Monroe, but a rereading of the private life that the star was able to live, borrowing more from fiction than from history. true. Demanding, surprising and daring are all qualifiers that come to mind to describe Netflix’s cinema proposal. “Andrew Dominik invites the viewer to a sensory, subjective and experiential cinema proposal” believes Cinemateaser, who does not hesitate to speak of “masterpiece”. As TF1 reminds us, the film is very singular and totally detaches from the traditional “biopic”: “Blonde is a hallucinated and hallucinating trip of 2h42, an extreme work whose audacity risks leaving part of the public on the wayside. “
In Blonde, the spectator immerses himself completely in the nightmare that Marilyn Monroe could have been for Norma Jean, victim of a patriarchal society and crushed by the star system. Conversely, the film can be criticized for totally dispossessing Marilyn Monroe of her many professional accomplishments, to reduce her to the dramas of her life (some of which, let’s remember, are fictionalized or invented) and set her up as a victim of patriarchy. “Blonde reduces all its complexity to its fragility, deplore Les Echos. In addition, the film forgets its heritage, which remains to us very concretely from the passage of Marilyn: her work” The performance of actress of Ana de Armas, “disturbing ” (Télé-Loisirs), “striking and demanding” (Ecran Large), “formidable” (Le Figaro), is unanimously hailed by critics. We will love or we will hate Blonde, but it is obvious that it is an experiment to try. Remember, however, that because of several violent or raw scenes, the film is not recommended for children under 17.
- Ana de Armas: Norma Jeane Baker / Marilyn Monroe
- Bobby Cannavale: Joe DiMaggio
- Adrien Brody : Arthur Miller
- Julianne Nicholson : Gladys
- Caspar Phillipson: President
- Toby Huss : Whitey
- Sara Paxton : Miss Flynn
- Eden Riegel : Esther
- Mr Z : David Warshofsky
- Lily Fisher: Young Norma Jeane
- Evan Williams : Eddy
- Xavier Samuel : Cass
- Michael Masini : Tony Curtis
- Rebecca Wisocky : Yvet
- Ned Bellamy : Doc Fell
- Haley Webb : Brooke
- Ravil Isyanov : Billy Wilder
- Tim Ransom : Rudy
Blonde was released on September 28, 2022. Presented at the Venice Film Festival a few weeks earlier, it is however not possible to discover it in the cinema releases of the week. The film directed by Andrew Dominik can be viewed exclusively on Netflix. You must therefore be a subscriber to the platform and have an account to discover this legal streaming drama.