We thought we knew everything about Marilyn Monroe, who mysteriously disappeared at the age of 36 on August 4, 1962 in Los Angeles. The heroine of Seven years of reflection who has fun on a vent to make the ruffles of her skirt fly away, the one who whispered while singing Happy birthday to President John Kennedy in 1962, the one who has long been confined to the roles of “lovely idiot”… Everyone has in mind these moments that have become cults.
But 60 years before the #MeToo movement, a documentary broadcast Monday April 18, 2022 on France 5, entitled Amazing: Marilyn, woman of today, shows a Hollywood icon totally in control of her image, and ready to denounce the sexual predators of Hollywood.
Thus, in 1953, she published a text in which she denounced those she called “the wolves”. “She is already a rising star, and she herself writes an article in a specialized magazine and describes the toxic universe of Hollywood when you are a young woman who wants to succeed in the cinema. She does not give names like today ‘ today in the #MeToo movement, but says that she meets a producer who tells her the method to make cinema”, describe Raphaëlle Baillot, co-director of the documentary, interviewed on franceinfo.
Five years after the start of #MeToo and sixty years after her tragic death, Marilyn Monroe is a woman of today.
The DOC #Stunning “Marilyn, woman of today”, this evening at 9 p.m. pic.twitter.com/XIrrmqQQMn
– France 5 (@France5tv) April 18, 2022
Confined to the roles of “lovely idiot”, Marilyn Monroe decided in 1954 to leave Los Angeles incognito under the pseudonym of Zelda Zonk to take lessons in New York at the Actor’s studio: she bequeathed all her fortune to her director Lee Strasberg. “She, the Hollywood bimbo, decides to confront the world of New York comedians, among the intellectuals. But she wants to take acting lessons”, observes Raphaëlle Baillot.
Marilyn Monroe entirely builds her image, her hair color, the five layers of lipstick. She creates an object of desire, looks at herself in her mirror and does not hesitate, when the camera is rolling, to make the spectators believe that she is making love with it. Raphaëlle Baillot explains: “She invents a new way to bring her body in front of the lens. It’s a work of several years. She starts as a model for photographers. She will decide to change. She’s a young redhead a little luscious, she decides to become more and more blond, to get a point of beauty“, Explain Raphaëher Baillot. For Isabelle Adjani, interviewed during this documentary, Marilyn Monroe then represents the “matrix of all actresses“.