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Marilyn Monroe and Movie Connoisseurs

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 11:27

As part of its Movie Connoisseurs programme, Ster-Kinekor’s art house circuit Cinema Nouvea presents a special screening of My Week With Marilyn on 29 January at Cinema Nouvea in Rosebank, Johannesburg. Renowned film critic Barry Ronge will introduce the film.

The film stars the Oscar nominated Michelle Williams, who has won a string of awards at various film festivals as well as a Golden Globe for her performance.

My Week With Marilyn was directed by Simon Curtis. It stars Eddie Redmayne, Kenneth Branagh and Dame Judi Dench.

Marilyn Monroe died on 5 Aug, 1962, aged 36, but 50 years after her death, her name, her image and her films are still known and loved. Other stars have come and gone but she is still considered to be one of the most instantly recognised personalities and one of the most luminous screen icons. Her life, however, was profoundly complex, difficult and finally tragic. My Week With Marilyn evokes her legend.

There have been at least 10 biographies of Marilyn Monroe but one of the most personal and intimate books about her life was written by Colin Clark. My Week with Marilyn was his account of how he got his first movie job, as a lowly third-assistant director of the film.

Laurence Olivier was both the star and the director of the film, which was based on a play called “The Sleeping Prince”. Olivier had played the role on stage and decided it would make a good movie. On an impulse he decided that Marilyn Monroe would be a perfect co-star for him and to everyone’s surprise, she accepted and flew to London to make the film.

Olivier soon found that while Marilyn (Michelle Williams) was a dazzling presence on screen and a gracefully intuitive actress, she had personal demons of insecurity that bordered on crisis. Olivier and his production team were used to working on a tight shooting-schedule, but her chronic lateness and temperament threw their entire schedule into chaos.

In all that craziness was Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne), a timid guy trying do his best on his first real job. Marilyn instantly sensed his vulnerability and she chose to have him working closely with her, to the fury of her husband Arthur Miller (Dougray Scott) and her ferociously protective acting coach, Paula Strasberg (Zoe Wannamaker).

Years later, after her death, Colin Clark published his memoir My Week with Marilyn, an affectionate account of two vulnerable people who teamed up to get through a difficult situation. It’s not exactly a love-story, it’s more like a delicate, intimate friendship that lasted for only a few weeks, but stayed in his memory for the rest of his life.

Colin Clark stayed in the film business, working more in TV than in film. He wrote the book My Week with Marilyn in 2000 and he died, in his mid-Seventies on December 12, 2002. It’s rather sad that he never got to see the film.

Bookings are now open for this pre-release screening of the film, which starts at 5.30pm after refreshments served at 5pm.

Standard ticket rates apply. Please book your tickets via sterkinekor.com, sterkinekor.mobi, Ticketline 082 16789, or via the Self Service Terminals.

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