The Misfits is showing at the Palace Cinema in Broadstairs, Kent, this weekend.
“The Misfits was written for the screen by Monroe’s then husband, Arthur Miller, adapted from his own short story from a few years before. Miller’s opaque motivations are a subtext running under this movie; with a strangely uxorious dedication or vengefulness, Miller conceived the whole thing for Marilyn. It is the story of a passionate, vulnerable, childlike free spirit who finds a complex kind of excitement and freedom – flavoured with disillusion – with a real man after divorcing an emotionally blank city dweller. (Monroe and Miller divorced immediately after production.) The key irony of the title is that of course no one on screen is a misfit: they fit in all too well with the stark landscape and each other in their loneliness, their discontent and their yearning for something else or something more to live for … Monroe is Roslyn, a woman who has arrived in Reno, Nevada to get the ‘quickie’ divorce available in that state. She lives with her roommate and pal Isabelle (Thelma Ritter), who coaches her in what to say in the divorce hearing. In this scene, as Roslyn nervously mutters the formal phrases to herself, you can hear Monroe stop speaking in her signature breathiness and take on a weird kind of normality or neutrality, the way she might have habitually spoken on screen had her career gone another way … Monroe’s performance is fascinatingly sad: the mannerisms and style (apart from that pre-divorce moment) are what had become her authentic self and they have their own sad music, especially when she stops dead in the middle of cocktails with Ritter’s Isabelle and confesses that, just for a moment, she misses her mother.”
– Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
And Marilyn’s two Billy Wilder films are coming soon as part of ‘Nobody’s Perfect,’ a series of dementia-friendly screenings honouring the filmmaker.
THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH: August 28, 30, September 1 – “Marilyn Monroe is a middle-aged man’s ultimate fantasy in this all-tme classic … Richard Sherman (Tom Ewell), a middle-aged publishing executive whose wife and son have left New York for a vacation, is left to endure the sweltering city heat with an increasingly overactive imagination. Matters aren’t helped by the presence of a beautiful, vivacious woman in the apartment upstairs. He doesn’t stand a chance. Monroe’s first collaboration with Billy Wilder created the most iconic image of her career – in that white dress – but also capitalised on her comedic talents and seamless ability to blend sensual sexuality with naïve sweetness.”
SOME LIKE IT HOT: – September 11-13, 15 – “Marilyn Monroe sizzles opposite Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in Billy Wilder’s great comedy. On the run from the mob, down-at-heel musicians Joe and Jerry sneak out of town by disguising themselves as women and joining an all-female jazz troupe. However, they both find themselves falling for their new band’s ditzy lead vocalist and ukulele player, Sugar Kane. In one of her most celebrated roles, Monroe brings irresistible charm and vulnerability to Sugar, giving Wilder’s comedic masterpiece its emotional anchor.”
The Marilyn Report 