I loved it, my daughter loved it, the other six women that I went with loved it; in fact everyone in the cinema seemed to enjoy it. And the cinema was pretty full. Even though I loved it, at the beginning, I wasn’t sure about Michelle Williams as Marilyn. There was something not quite right. Her face? Well, she isn’t Marilyn. Her boobs perhaps? They are clearly nowhere near as impressive as the real thing. But by the time she gets naked (only twice, including once in Windsor Great Park), I was convinced she was just as seductive as Marilyn, and had captured her charm and vulnerability beautifully. The film reinforces the popular image of the troubled, often childlike, yet sexy icon. This is one man’s intimate, yet strangely innocent memory of her. I asked myself why there were so few men in the audience.
The film is based on the memoirs of documentary filmmaker Colin Clark. Until the making of this film, his elder brother, former Tory MP and diarist Alan Clark, may have been a lot better known. It is a memoir of Colin and Marilyn’s relationship during the shooting of the 1956 film The Prince and the Showgirl at Pinewood Studios. The film covers the period on set and the few days they spent together, when Marilyn needed to get away and dragged the not unwilling Clark with her. Whether or not Clark’s memory of the time is strictly accurate doesn’t really matter. It makes for a great story and a rather engaging romance. It stars a host of well-known British actors and includes some fabulous performances, particularly from Kenneth Branagh (Sir Laurence Olivier), Michelle Williams and Judi Dench as Cybil Thorndike, the only one who stands up to Olivier.
Eddie Redmayne plays the young Clark, whose dream of working in movies comes true when he hustles his way into a job as third assistant director, (which means doing anything but assist the director – so a gofer), on the set of the Olivier and Marilyn movie. His parents are friends with the Oliviers but are not overly impressed with his choice of career after Eton and Oxford. He tells us at the start, “I was the youngest in a family of over-achievers. I was always a disappointment.” This sets the tone for the movie. The period is lovingly, and amusingly, recreated. It was a time when women thought they were over the hill at 43 (at least Vivien Leigh did) and the unions could close down a film set if the wrong person moved a prop. And it was possible to meet and fall in love with one of the most fascinating cultural icons ever, if only you had the right connections. The film manages to capture the glamour and the humour of Clark’s diary. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, and Redmayne is painfully self-conscious but charmingly self-deprecating in a way the privileged and well educated do best.
When Clark catches Marilyn’s eye, he can’t believe his luck. It’s the ‘magic of the movies’. His screen idol confides in him about her marriage, her lack of confidence in her acting ability, asks him to stay with her because everyone she loves always leaves her, and then gets her kit off in front of him. He is romantically enthralled, in love with the best-known actress in the world. And for one whole week life couldn’t get any better. It doesn’t matter that Olivier retaliates by being a complete bitch to both Clark and Marilyn. Once he realises that his fantasy of a little fling with Marilyn has been thwarted by a lowly third assistant (who wouldn’t have been there without his help), he is furious. Colin has stolen his thunder and has to pay; he is back to making the tea. At the same time, Larry ridicules Marilyn’s attempts at Method Acting and tells her to stick to doing what she’s good at, being sexy!
Branagh is brilliant as Olivier: the clipped voice, the heavy make-up, the monocle, the dimple and the sneer. He actually really looks like him. He quotes Shakespeare for effect and generally just loves himself. He’s pompous and funny at the same time. He tells Marilyn, in one of his more vicious outbursts, “They wouldn’t stand for this nonsense at the Hippodrome in Eastbourne!” Poor Marilyn. That must have really knocked her confidence, not that she had much to start with, it seems. And poor Vivien Leigh, his wife at the time. She had played the role Marilyn was playing in the Rattigan play on stage, but was now considered too old, at least by her husband. Of course she had the measure of him. “I hope she makes your life hell,” she tells him. So while the film is sympathetic to Marilyn, it is less so to Larry. We always knew he was a real lovey, now we see him as a bully, a lech and a sexist git as well.
The film’s host of well-known names includes Dominic Cooper and Emma Watson, as Colin’s other brief flirtation from Wardrobe. My complaint is that Julia Ormond, who plays Vivien Leigh, is nowhere near as attractive as the real Vivien was, even at the ripe old age of 43. My daughter’s complaint was that Eddie Redmayne wasn’t very attractive at all. Why on earth would Marilyn go for him? Not sure it was his body or his looks she was after, just someone who idolised her and was prepared to listen. She wanted adulation and unconditional love, and she certainly found it in Colin, who by the way is quite attractive in a strangely unconventional way.
This movie is really watchable, wonderfully entertaining and thoroughly absorbing. It transports you back to a moment in time, a romantic moment from a memoir when a dream came true. It deserves to be shared and enjoyed, a real moment of movie magic.
DIRECTED BY Simon Curtis
STARRING Michelle Williams, Eddie Redmayne and Kenneth Branagh
US 2011 99mins
