Cast: Marilyn Monroe, Jane Russell

Director: Howard Hawks

Screenplay: Charles Lederer

Running time: 1 hr 27 mins

Genre: Musical



CRITIQUE:


Howard Hawks, one of the most eminent directors of the Hollywood golden era, hopping from one genre to another, the gangster (Scarface), the melodrama (Only Angels Have Wings), the comedy (Bringing Up Baby), the film noir (The Big Sleep), and in 1953 reunited with star Marilyn Monroe for the musical Gentlemen Prefer Blondes – which evidently created some dazzling ripples into the musicals of our age. The classic sequence of the sultry Monroe clad in a pink gown with sparkling jewelleries strutting to ‘Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend’ have not only inspired Madonna to create ‘Material Girls’, and fashioning a music-video homage, but also was performed to spectacular effect by Nicole Kidman’s Satine in the orgiastic Bohemian musical Moulin Rouge! Nevertheless, despite of its show-stopping sequences, co-pin-up girl Jane Russell joins sex symbol Monroe, in this pompous, wonderfully stupid film. Of course, the highlights stand out, with blazing colours like neon signs (Pink! Red! Orange!), the vertiginous often stilted music pieces seem like Monroe and Russell’s vehicle to blare some lungs and show-off some curves. The plot of two best-friends-cum-showgirls, albeit with very polar attitudes, Russell a sensible, level-headed woman, whilst Monroe an idiotic blonde bombshell loony for money (take it this way, a modern version would be Paris Hilton), is very ordinary, given less importance. Editing requires to dissolve from one moment to the next – hence the enhancement of musical setpieces, from the giddy (a gang of half-naked men performing athletics next to Russell), pointless (characters Lorelei and Dorothy starts singing in a Parisian café), to the guilty pleasure (Monroe, adorable and innocuous, an onscreen persona she would be famous for, dancing to the finale). Before we forget, the blond-and-brunette duo is then photocopied in a more recent reimagining, the stylish Chicago, and like both films’ men, they are all just puppets, no less than objects of manipulation.


VERDICT:

A passable piece of entertainment circa 1950s. Howard Hawks is never really a musical director, but it’s Marilyn Monroe who saves the show.



RATING: B-