(Rated 4/5 )
This is a wonderful little film about real-life film-maker Colin Clark’s time spent working as third assistant director on The Prince and The Showgirl, starring Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe. It features particularly beautiful performances from Michelle Williams as Marilyn and Eddie Redmayne. He is adorable as the young Colin, who becomes besotted with Marilyn and helps take care of her, so enabling her to produce her incredible performances. Also personally striking a huge note for me was Dame Judi Dench as Dame Sybil Thorndike, who contrary to Olivier’s reaction to her, encouraged Marilyn by asking her for help in reading lines together – such a lovely example of empowering someone! Michelle produced a truly inspired, sympathetic and gentle embodiment of Marilyn.
This is a gorgeous insight into Marilyn’s use of Method acting, which so conflicted with Olivier’s (Kenneth Branagh) use of technique from observation of people. Marilyn’s work was erratic to say the least. Many times she would be late for set, other times ill and unable to come at all, yet more times what she produced was wrong, mediocre or even bad. This maddened Olivier. Yet when in the zone – and as Paula Strasberg (played very nicely and humorously by Zoe Wanamaker) said it took her time to prepare – she was sheer brilliance. She was so vulnerable and in touch with a breadth of emotional range, which would even amaze Olivier. As he said towards the end of the film, while he and Colin watch the rushes of her work as The Showgirl, she was exceptional and yet had no idea how good she was, which made her even more brilliant.
The captions at the end of the film remind us that following this work, Marilyn made Some Like It Hot – her most famous and critically acclaimed performance. And Olivier also produced his best work on stage directly afterwards. Had they learned from each other in spite of their majorly opposing approaches?
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