Charming talented actress, judged with sarcasm Prisoner of the image of “goose julie” of cinema
Perhaps those who argue that in front of Marilyn one can only be silent, that every word risks being out of tune, of seeming too much, are right, because certain falls in love and certain passions can only be diminished if they are entrusted to words.
How to describe what it feels like to see it on the screen while playing the ukulele in “Some like it hot”while looking for some coolness from the subway grates of “When the wife is on vacation” or in a sweater and black tights while singing «My Heart Belongs to Daddy» in “Make love”? And they are just the first of the many images that come back to while thinking back to the diva died sixty years ago, on August 4, 1962carrying with him the secret of a charm that could not be explained only with her beauty or with the films she had played or with a love life that too many have bothered to dirty.
If many years later we are still here to regret it (at the Venice Film Festival it will be up to Ana de Armas to revive it, in «Blonde»), it means that he really knew how to give shape to the dreams not only of his generation but to those of a whole era, the 1950s of Kennedy and Khrushchev, of Pope John and Castro, of those who were looking for the new and of those who he wanted to forget the past. Even at the cost of paying too high a price.
Perhaps no actress has been vivisected and examined like her. And none of the stinging sarcasm of those who felt entitled to judge and condemn was exercised (let’s forget who took the liberty of saying that “directing Marilyn is like directing Lassie. It takes fourteen takes before she barks in the right way”. drawer of those who must necessarily show off cynicism). Of course, like all and like all the first steps were not immediately sent: it is easy to make fun of “Blonde orchid” (1948), her first starring role, where she is a burlesque girl suffocated by her mother and harassed by the owner of the club. But already two years later, in «Eve against EveOn George Sanders’ arm, he knows how to leave his mark. Her apprenticeship was long, forced to go through the (often stereotyped) characters that Hollywood created for those she thought more beautiful than good. Yet when she ends up in the hands of a director who knows the trade, you immediately understand that you are faced with a rose that just has to bloom. As happens another two years later in “The magnificent joke“, Where Howard Hawks (and the screenwriters Ben Hetch, Charles Lederer and IAL Diamond: three absolute geniuses) transform it into a” kissing shop on a continuous schedule “, unforgettable when she shows off her” acetates “(that is, her nylon stockings ) clumsy Cary Grant. An actor, it must be remembered, who was certainly not the latest arrival and to whom Marilyn offered the beats like a great professional.
It was easy at the time to make fun of his artistic ambitions, on her desire for characters other than the “happy geese” that Hollywood imposed on her. But it would be enough to scroll through the notebook used during “Some like it hot” (Taschen published it) to understand the commitment that the actress put into her job and her desire to improve, to surpass herself. That maybe she wasn’t always picked up by those around her, but that she knew how to reach those who watched her on the screen.
Her only real mistake was not having built herself a character capable of silencing the vulgarity that prevailed (and not only then) in the world of cinema, as many of her more cunning and “armored” colleagues knew how to do. Marilyn did not hide her frailties in a sharkish way, her insecurities in the face of who she seemed to have none. She confessed her wishes for her and her dreams with the simplicity and immediacy of a child, going far beyond the roles that cinema attributed to her. This is why she is moved in “The displaced “, because the newly divorced, who seems to continually have to deal with the sense of abandonment (and death) that surrounds her, has ended up turning into a will in a loud voice, in the desperate declaration of love of those who are unable to find a friend to confide in. Just like she happened that night of August 4th, when all the phone calls she made about her went blank, leaving her dramatically alone.
July 31, 2022 (change July 31, 2022 | 11:48)
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