• Director of 'Blonde' Andrew Dominik: "Ana de Armas is pure instinct in front of the camera. I love her"

  • Criticism 'Blonde' turns Ana de Armas into a myth and is confirmed as the great film of the year

  • Opinion Penélope Cruz praises the work of Ana de Armas in 'Blonde': "It is very difficult to interpret Marilyn and she has embroidered it"

  • Icon Marilyn Monroe: the men in her life

Blonde

, the film, is a fiction based on another fiction -

Blonde

, the novel by Joyce Carol Oates- based in turn, albeit capriciously, on the life of a flesh and blood person named

Marilyn Monroe

.

For this reason, the lurid ordeal, between fascinating and grotesque, orchestrated on screen by its screenwriter and director, Andrew Dominik, can confuse the unsuspecting viewer and pass for a

biopic

.

This is the latest and perhaps most striking contribution to the hodgepodge of reality and fantasy that exists around that popular culture commonplace called Marilyn.

The controversy aroused by some scenes in the film -the attempted drowning in the bathtub at the hands of his mother, the rape in the producer's office, the sad fellatio on a hotel bed to John F. Kennedy while he is watching the launch of a rocket on the television- invites us to clarify some of the human truth behind

one of the most formidable myths

of the 20th century.

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Cinema.

Blonde: a fetus, a vagina and an infinite controversy

  • Drafting: LUIS MARTÍNEZMadrid

Blonde: a fetus, a vagina and an infinite controversy

Interview.

Ana de Armas: "I doubt that those who have decided on the 'Blonde' category have seen a porn movie"

  • Drafting: LUIS MARTÍNEZ Venice

Ana de Armas: "I doubt that those who have decided on the 'Blonde' category have seen a porn movie"

“Artists will always be inspired by icons like Marilyn.

She has been the muse to many, but if someone is going to recreate and fictionalize a real person they should have some knowledge of who she was and feel some sort of connection with her."

This is Charles Casillo, author of one of the latest published biographies on Marilyn Monroe,

The private life of a public icon

, unpublished in Spanish.

“I think that

neither Joyce Carol Oates nor Andrew Dominik have understood Marilyn Monroe

or felt the least bit of empathy towards her.

They have projected her prejudice and her contempt.

Blonde

is a nasty movie, portraying Marilyn as weak and foolish when in real life she was an intelligent and ambitious woman.

Testimonies abound that show that, in effect, Marilyn did not have a fool's hair, and that she was perhaps fragile, but not weak.

Among the hundreds of books that exist on the Monroe subject, there is a very special one in the first person,

My Story

, which she made hand in hand with Ben Hecht.

This legendary screenwriter from the golden age of Hollywood was responsible for clearing up the testimony of Marilyn, then newly married to DiMaggio, and collected in the course of several interviews held at the Beverly Hills Hotel in March 1954.

With that book, the actress intended, as Víctor Fernández points out in the epilogue to the Spanish edition of

My Story

, published in 2011, to contain the rumor mill about her turbulent childhood and her beginnings in the world of cinema, «building her own image and put an end to the image of dumb blonde that persecuted her» after successes such as

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

or

How to Marry a Millionaire

.

Image from the book 'Norman Mailer/Bert Stern.

Marilyn Monroe' (Taschen).

Though polished by Hecht's fine pen, Monroe's testimony, according to biographer Casillo, is truthful.

"She oversaw it and approved it, and she wept with joy when she read the final version."

My Story

is a moving book, in which the actress, leaning on her narrator's brilliant crutch, narrates without dwelling on the misfortunes of her battered childhood (no trace of an attempted drowning in the bathtub),

the movement between the orphanage and the nine foster families

she passed through - "sad homes devastated by misery" of the Great Depression that needed the five dollars a week they were paid to take her in - her early and fleeting first marriage at 16 to escape her administrative status as an orphan, her beginnings as a model - "the same instinct that leads a duck to water led me to photographic studios" - and her lonely meritoriousness in that "desperate, deceitful and begging" Hollywood, a "crowded brothel" in the that, contrary to what it implies

Blonde

, was able to keep the "wolves" at bay, as she refers to the men who surrounded her all her life since when she was only 12 years old she realized the magnetism she aroused in them.

That "erotic vibration" that one of her acting teachers, Mikhail Chekhov, nephew of the great Russian writer, recognized while studying a scene from The Cherry Orchard together.

"At the time of the

castings

," explains Casillo, "Marilyn fought hard to safeguard her integrity.

After her first role in

Choir Girls

, studio head Harry Cohn called her into her office.

She had done a good job and deserved a contract, but

Cohn insisted on his sexual advances on

her.

He was a very powerful man, but she disgusted him.

She asked him to spend the weekend with him on her yacht.

"I'd love to, Mr. Cohen," she replied.

"Also, I'm looking forward to meeting her lovely wife. Will she be coming with us?"

Marilyn didn't get the contract at Columbia, but she wasn't willing to pay the price to get it."

Monroe did not even agree to marry

in article mortis

her dear friend and agent, Johnny Hyde, who had landed her her first two major, albeit brief, roles in

The Asphalt Jungle

and

Naked Eve

.

“He was absolutely in love with Marilyn, and he was one of the first people to realize her potential as a big star.

This conviction of hers gave her the confidence that he needed », says Casillo.

"She begged him to marry him, arguing that she was rich and that she could inherit everything he owned.

But she Marilyn », although she needed the money,« rejected the proposal.

She adored him as her friend, as her father figure, but not in a romantic way."

By then, Monroe had already met what she says was her first love.

In

Ella my Story

she describes him passionately, almost desperately, but without revealing his identity, because she "is now married to a movie star and might find it awkward" if she did.

"That man," Casillo explains, "was Fred Karger," a musician and songwriter "Columbia hired to musically prepare Marilyn for

Chorus Girls

.

She fell madly in love, but he, who had a daughter from a previous marriage, thought that Monroe would not be the ideal mother for her child.

The star Karger married in 1952 was Ronald Reagan's ex Jane Wyman.

A year later, Marilyn coincided in a photo session for

Look

magazine with a person who will be key in her career.

His name was Milton H. Greene, and he not only took some of the most iconic photographs of the actress, but also helped her expose and undo her leonine contract with Twentieth Century Fox, and partnered with her to found Marilyn Monroe Productions, the company from which the star sought to develop his

personal projects with absolute freedom

.

“She wanted to act and he wanted to produce and direct.

It was the dream of both of them, and it was briefly fulfilled with

Bus Stop

and

The Prince and the Showgirl

», explains from Florence, Oregon, Milton's son, Joshua Greene, 68, a photographer and custodian of his father's artistic legacy.

But in 1957, the professional relationship between Milton and the actress broke down.

According to her son, "Arthur Miller", her husband at that time, "pressured Marilyn to exercise her 51% majority in the company and reach an agreement" so that Milton left the company and Miller could occupy her place.

“That decision made him very sad, but the negotiation was carried out on very fair and reasonable terms.

She didn't want to end up like another of the many men who had taken advantage of her» (in the mid-1970s, after being kept in a drawer for 20 years, it will be Milton Greene who will publish the manuscript of

My Story

).

According to Greene, in the last stretch of her life, Marilyn "was manipulated by men who did not respect her, and that only aggravated her insecurity and her depression."

Furthermore, she "was overcome by an increasingly toxic relationship with her husband."

Casillo corroborates this: «Marilyn was always looking for people to save her.

Paternal figures, maternal figures, messiahs... Anything that would help her feel more secure».

And some took advantage of that dependency.

"Among them, Miller himself."

What precipitated its fatal outcome?

According to Casillo, the actress «she was an emotionally very fragile person in the last months of her life.

I think she had a lot to do with turning 36.

She felt insecure with her physical appearance, the newspapers insisted that her career was going to hell.

She was such a perfectionist that she found it increasingly difficult to get in front of the camera.

To survive that summer of '62 she would have needed an extremely loyal and insightful support network, but she trusted the wrong people and ended up falling apart.

WHAT ABOUT THE KENNEDYS?

Marilyn's vexatious visit to JFK is one of

Blonde

's most controversial moments .

There has been much speculation about the actress's relationship with the

Kennedy brothers

.

"For John," explains Casillo, "it was just a fling. Later on, Marilyn started seeing Bobby. She had high hopes. I'm convinced that Bobby loved her, but because of his political position, he had to distance himself." .

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