This is a very easy choise, but you cannot talk about Marilyn without talking about this movie. You just cant.
Two weeks ago, there was a showing of this picture in a theater here in Milan. The room was full and I rarely saw people enjoying so much and laughing so genuinely at a movie, especially when the movie is from 1959 and half the people had already seen. It is always heartening seeing people celebrate the classics.
Some say it is Billy Wilder's best performance. For as much as I appreciate this movie, I don't agree with this opinion. However, I sure think it is Marilyn's best performance.
Chicago, 1929. Two broke musicians (Curtis and Lemmon) become unvoluntary witness to a mob crime. They disguise as women to avoid a cruel end and join an all female band on its way to Florida. Singer and ukulele player in this band is Sugar (Monroe). It is the classic interlacement of double senses, misunderstandings and mistakes, with great supporting stories and characters, all magistrally directed by Wilder.
Curtis and Lemmon give a great performance. Curtis is Joe, Josephine and Mr. Shell all in one movie. Lemmon is Jerry and Dafne and funny to the core: his facial mimicry is umatched to this day. During the shooting, Wilder told his lead actors that they had to be perfect in every single take, no matter how many for each scene, because the one time that Marilyn got it right, it had to be it. Of course, all we see on screen are the times when Marilyn did get it right: the result is jus great and she is definitly the star of this picture.
Unlike her collegues, she is Sugar from beginning to end: no costumes nor funny voices, just Sugar. And it is more than enough to fill the whole screen and the whole movie. This character is much more complex than "The Girl", whom she plays in her previous collaboration with Wilder (The Seven Year Itch, 1955): Sugar has dreams and hopes; she has a past and we get a glimpse of her future; she is fragile and naive, but also determined in her way (she has to kiss Mr. Shell into healing and she will keep trying until she makes it!).
Marilyn Monroe gives life to this character: it's like she had been preparing for this whole her life; like the characters she had been playing until now where drafts and rehearsals and this is the big show. And what a show, what a show.
She was already a star before, but this movie made her an icon: we all now how "I wanna be loved by you" goes; we know the faces she makes when she talks about that "hot" jazz music; we know the way she jumps away from the steam jet at the station; we know the light that surrond her when her head comes out of her bunk; we know the way she gets close to Dafne and Josephine, people who helped her and undertsood her; we know how funny her naivery result in such a setting; we know her Sugar believed in love and stayed true to it, to the end.
Writers: Billy Wilder (screenplay), I.A.L. Diamond (screenplay)
Stars: Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon
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