Add the Gazzetta del Sud as a source
Marilyn Monroe would have turned 100 on June 1st. How would she have aged? How long would he work? She would still have had that short layered platinum blonde hair that has been called ever since Marilyn Bob? Would he have worn black eyeliner to underline his famous short-sighted look? The immortal icon remained forever crystallized at the age of his death, on August 4, 1962, 36 years old, of marvelous beauty, at that Flesh Impact according to Billy Wilder’s definition, that is, to its carnal impact, to the sensation of almost being able to touch it, ultimately to its sensuality which was one of the reasons for its success.
Maggie Gyllenhaal’s different gaze
Few characters like Marilyn have been examined, analyzed in every aspect of the private as well as the public, in life and especially afterwards, what do we still not know about her? Maggie Gyllenhaal, this year president of the jury at the Venice Film Festival, tries to tell it on the centenary of her birth with a different look. The 21-minute short film, presented as a world premiere today in Venice on the occasion of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement to Ellen Burstyn who is one of the Marilyns in the film (the other is Dakota Johnson), was preceded by great anticipation, like all things concerning the American diva. The cast also includes Peter Sarsgaard and Sepideh Moafi, recently nominated for an Emmy for The Pitt.
The impossible audition
An elegant elderly lady waddles in high heels from an electric car on a downtown New York street and enters a theater to audition for the role of socialite Carol Cutrere in Tennessee Williams’ 1957 play Orpheus descending. She’s an hour late (Marilyn always has been), but the casting director points out that the problem is different: “Carol is 25 years old.”
Thus begins the first-person story of Marilyn, adored, exploited, idolized and destroyed. A Marilyn who, in order to get job offers, remembers having to boldly walk around the studio in her slip so that they would notice her and unleash the Flesh Impact of the title.
Two actresses, one portrait
Dakota Johnson also appears in a game of age, who is the young, beautiful Marilyn, at the peak of her career and fragility but it is on Burstyn, the older Marilyn, that Gyllenhaal’s portrait focuses, delicate and very sad, until the unexpected ending: a serenade to Marilyn Monroe with the unmistakable voice of Patti Smith.
The actress gives her monologue for the audition, but first she retraces her career and brings out all her pain as if in a loud meditation, from that of her city which honored Jane Russell but not her, which considered actresses prostitutes, to the compromises made. She is a wounded Marilyn, but at the same time aware of her superpower, femininity.