MERRY MARILYN. NATURAL ELEGANCE, MAGICAL CHARM

For the Christmas Holidays The National Museum of Cinema is honouring Marilyn Monroe, with a spectacular event with iconic objects to recall the woman who embodied the role of the star, ‘the brightest star of the Hollywood galaxy’ more than anyone else.

From December the 12th 2018 to January the 28th 2019, rare memorabilia from all over the world will be on display beneath the large screens of the Temple Hall, the heart of the Museum and of Antonelli’s  Mole. The objects speak of Marilyn’s  innate charm, a hardly repeatable blend of femininity with a natural and sensual combination.

The tribute to the star - curated by Nicoletta Pacini and Tamara Sillo -  and has a host of objects on display: the original shoes worn by the actress from the Salvatore Ferragamo Museum collections as well as a spectacular display starring the 11 heel patent red décolleté Salvatore Ferragamo made especially for the actress.

From the Los Angeles  Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences the sketches of her costumes  plates by major  designers.

The National Museum of Cinema is displaying new personal objects of the actress belonging to the Museum’s collection: a pair of earrings and a bracelet with a to “Marilyn Love Frank” engraved on it (maybe a gift from Frank Sinatra…?),, a sensual black lace bodice, a pair of shoes with her initials on the sole and, for the first time, the beauty-case used on the set of Some like it hot.

The exhibition is further enriched by magazines of the time, film clips and photos picturing Marilyn in all her splendour . The images also include a special of Marilyn & Christmas, in closing the festive homage to the star.

The tribute to Marilyn Monroe is continuing at the Cinema Massimo, where 9  of the most famous films she starred in – such as Niagara and Some like it hot will be shown from the 8th to the 22nd of January.

Many famous people from the film world have celebrated her special charisma.

Marilyn Monroe knew how to change things and make them coincide with reality, said Lee Strasberg, just as the limelight went out and the everlasting myth of the actress emerged. That is how Marilyn’s acting style and versatility were described: it stemmed from her inborn and  perfected ability to fade melancholy into fragility and even into the comical traits of her painful humanity.

In François Truffaut’s words  “Somewhere between Chaplin and James Dean”, stressing her talent, instinct physical presence and sensitivity. She was an actress whose image was not only based on her absolute beauty as a seductive woman, but also on the complex personality of an actress who challenged conventions and imposed a new model. A star of modernity, a feminist in her own way, Norma Jeane Mortenson Baker, Marilyn Monroe being her  stage name,  helped shape the new rules of the Star System, bringing forward the revolutions and the social changes that were to transform Hollywood a few years later..

This explains why Edgar Morin called her “The last star of the past and the first without the Star System”, having tried to rebel against it to escape her image being turned into a commodity. Whimsical and moody to the point she might stop filming, but with a talent able to amaze directors such as Henry Hathaway and  Billy Wilder, the American Film Institute has classed Marilyn as the sixth greatest actress ever.

She was an inexhaustible source of inspiration for artists and scholars alike, and people keep writing about her or creating to this day: from After the Fall, (1964) where her former husband, the playwright Arthur Miller, rethought the star’s suicide wavering between cynicism and guilt, to Truman Capote’s in Music for Chameleons (1975), to Andy Warhol who turned Marilyn into a pop icon,  to Joyce Carroll Oates’ Blonde, who described her as a very insecure and very beautiful girl.

Splendour on film for the great Hollywood star in contrast with Elton John’s Candle in the Wind. Pier Paolo Pasolini, who spoke of her as a ‘little sister’, mused: “Could it be Marilyn, little Marilyn, who led the way?”, in a poem which in fact is one of the most touching of his movie Anger, released in 1963, a year after her controversial suicide.