She read James Joyce. She wrote about predatory men. She questioned pay disparity. Jessica Chastain narrates an all-female documentary about Monroe’s overlooked intellect
From the much-imitated Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend routine and the white dress billowing over a subway grate, to entertaining the US troops in Korea and JFK’s Happy Birthday, there are few people who could claim to be unaware of Marilyn Monroe’s legacy. But Reframed: Marilyn Monroe suggests that, actually, you might not know cinema’s greatest icon quite as well as you think. If you look closer, examine all the details and hold them up to a different light, these fragments might just tell another story.
That’s the premise of this thoughtful and analytical four-part documentary, which first appeared in the US last year, to coincide with the 60th anniversary of Monroe’s death at 36. It puts forward alternative versions and interpretations of what we think we know about her life and career. Was she the blond bombshell, the tragic victim, the passive, exploited young starlet chewed up and spat out by the Hollywood machine? Or was she an intellectual, a woman ahead of her time, a pioneering power broker when female stars had little power to barter with?
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