Although her celebrity lasted just a dozen years and it’s been 60-plus years since she died, Marilyn Monroe continues to reign as one of Hollywood’s greatest stars.
This week New York’s Museum of Modern Art mounts “Marilyn Monroe Celluloid Dream,” a 14-film retrospective, highlighted by her many classics, demonstrating her unique presence and surprisingly expansive range.
For fans of Marilyn, this is a terrific reason to visit New York.
The films range from “Niagara,” the thriller that was her star-making breakthrough in 1953, “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” which boasts “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” her most iconic musical sequence, and “Some Like It Hot,” among the greatest comedies ever made.
“Marilyn is eternal,” assistant curator Francisco Valente said in a phone interview.
“When we think about moving images — the bright and dark elements of moving images — we always go back to Marilyn, because she really embodied our fascination with the contradictions of the industry.
“How she was a spectacular comedic performer. How she understood the world she was in, how that world worked. How what she could do in order to receive attention and admiration, something she did not have in her real life.
“As you know, she was an orphan basically, moving from family to family. No one really wanted her in real life. She used cinema to receive that recognition and the love that she did not get in her real life. And she understood that perfectly.
“She looked at the industry at that time and many of those things are still valid today. How male-dominated it was. Mostly focused on male fantasies.
“The industry looked at her and wanted to create a new ‘dumb blonde’ for a mostly male audience.
“She understood that — and turned it around in her own fashion and created this character called ‘Marilyn Monroe.’
“Despite her own complications and troubles, she managed to embody everything that the industry represented.”
Valente, 43, emphasized, “These fantasies are fantasies as filmgoers that we’re looking for when we’re in the darkness looking at a film. Our secret desires. The images we see moving before us? She really knew how to play with it.
“When you read about her personal interests, you understand she knew exactly what she was doing.
“She was not dumb. She was incredibly clever and a great performer. Just terribly insecure, desperate for love and attention, which was something she did not have in real life. She found it tragically in moving images.”
Valente surprisingly includes one non-MM movie but a Marilyn-inspired entry: David Lynch’s surreal 2001 “Mullholand Drive.”
“In her myth especially Marilyn will continue to spark interest,” Valente concluded. “It’s our job to suggest there was something behind that myth and help people understand how it worked, how it existed, and why it will still live.”
The “Marilyn Monroe Celluloid Dream” series opens at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City March 12/moma.org
“Bus Stop,”1956. Directed by Joshua Logan. (Courtesy Anuvu/Criterion Pictures)
“All About Eve” with Ann Baxter, Bette Davis, Marilyn Monroe and George Sanders, 1950.”(Photo Allstar Picture Library Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo)
Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” 1953. Director: Howard Hawks. (cineclassico / Alamy Stock Photo)
The Museum of Modern Art in New York mounts “Marilyn Monroe Celluloid Dream,” a 14-film retrospective this week. (Photo by Cindy Ord/Getty Images)