SHADOWLAND
The emotional otherworlds of classic cinema. Unspooling the ribbon of dreams every Sunday afternoon.
Films in this Series
Howard Hawks
91 minutes
Screening in partnership with Frye Art Museum!
Lorelei (Marilyn Monroe) and Dorothy (Jane Russell) are just “Two Little Girls from Little Rock”—lounge singers on a transatlantic cruise, working their way to Paris while enjoying the company of any eligible men they might meet along the way. Russell’s flat sarcasm and Monroe’s social-climber put-on make them a delightful team (and Monroe’s performance underlines her brilliant control as a comic performer). The famous musical numbers dazzle with rich colors and wink-wink lyrics, but underneath there’s also a touching tale of friendship tested and director Howard Hawks’s clever take on gender politics.
"Was there ever a movie in which Miss Marilyn Monroe looked more relaxed, or closer to having a good time?" - David Thomson
"While Hawks’s only pure musical might conceivably be the most popular of his movies today, critics on the whole tend to be confounded by it. Treated only marginally in books devoted to the director, it has received attention more recently from feminist writers, who often disagree about essential characteristics. For Maureen Turin, it is sexist, racist, and colonialist; for Lucie Arbuthnot and Gall Seneca, it is jubilantly feminist and, at least by implication, proto-lesbian. Molly Haskell, no less persuasively, finds it “as close to satire as Hawks’s films ever get on the nature (and perversion) of sexual relations in America, particularly in the mammary-mad 50s. Like the blind men grasping different parts of the elephant, each of these writers is on to something — which helps to explain why the movie manages to accommodate some of the viewpoints and fantasies of heterosexuals and homosexuals of all genders." - Jonathan Rosenbaum
Boren Banner Series: Natalie Krick
Through April 6
In her new suite of collages, Natalie Krick deconstructs pictures of Marilyn Monroe from Bert Stern’s book The Complete Last Sitting, complicating the voyeuristic viewing imposed on its iconic subject.
Lorelei (Marilyn Monroe) and Dorothy (Jane Russell) are just “Two Little Girls from Little Rock”—lounge singers on a transatlantic cruise, working their way to Paris while enjoying the company of any eligible men they might meet along the way. Russell’s flat sarcasm and Monroe’s social-climber put-on make them a delightful team (and Monroe’s performance underlines her brilliant control as a comic performer). The famous musical numbers dazzle with rich colors and wink-wink lyrics, but underneath there’s also a touching tale of friendship tested and director Howard Hawks’s clever take on gender politics.
"Was there ever a movie in which Miss Marilyn Monroe looked more relaxed, or closer to having a good time?" - David Thomson
"While Hawks’s only pure musical might conceivably be the most popular of his movies today, critics on the whole tend to be confounded by it. Treated only marginally in books devoted to the director, it has received attention more recently from feminist writers, who often disagree about essential characteristics. For Maureen Turin, it is sexist, racist, and colonialist; for Lucie Arbuthnot and Gall Seneca, it is jubilantly feminist and, at least by implication, proto-lesbian. Molly Haskell, no less persuasively, finds it “as close to satire as Hawks’s films ever get on the nature (and perversion) of sexual relations in America, particularly in the mammary-mad 50s. Like the blind men grasping different parts of the elephant, each of these writers is on to something — which helps to explain why the movie manages to accommodate some of the viewpoints and fantasies of heterosexuals and homosexuals of all genders." - Jonathan Rosenbaum
Boren Banner Series: Natalie Krick
Through April 6
In her new suite of collages, Natalie Krick deconstructs pictures of Marilyn Monroe from Bert Stern’s book The Complete Last Sitting, complicating the voyeuristic viewing imposed on its iconic subject.
Billy Wilder
121 minutes
Screening in partnership with Frye Art Museum!
Few works in film history have earned so many horselaughs through the years as has Wilder’s relentlessly zany gender-bender, featuring two of the most famous (even if fake!) beauty marks in Hollywood, courtesy Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe. Joe and Jerry (Curtis and Jack Lemmon) escaping certain doom as witnesses to mob murders in Prohibition Era Chicago by donning showgirl drag and, as Josephine and Daphne, joining a Florida-bound all-female review. Complications ensue when Jerry catches the eye of an elderly millionaire, and Joe falls head over heels for Sugar Kane Kowalczyk (Marilyn Monroe, in a role that makes the most of her talent for combining pathos and comedy). Wilder brings the sexual anarchy of the Weimar Berlin cabaret into Eisenhower America, in a work which has lost nothing of its spirited exuberance and zest for life.
Boren Banner Series: Natalie Krick
Through April 6
In her new suite of collages, Natalie Krick deconstructs pictures of Marilyn Monroe from Bert Stern’s book The Complete Last Sitting, complicating the voyeuristic viewing imposed on its iconic subject.
Few works in film history have earned so many horselaughs through the years as has Wilder’s relentlessly zany gender-bender, featuring two of the most famous (even if fake!) beauty marks in Hollywood, courtesy Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe. Joe and Jerry (Curtis and Jack Lemmon) escaping certain doom as witnesses to mob murders in Prohibition Era Chicago by donning showgirl drag and, as Josephine and Daphne, joining a Florida-bound all-female review. Complications ensue when Jerry catches the eye of an elderly millionaire, and Joe falls head over heels for Sugar Kane Kowalczyk (Marilyn Monroe, in a role that makes the most of her talent for combining pathos and comedy). Wilder brings the sexual anarchy of the Weimar Berlin cabaret into Eisenhower America, in a work which has lost nothing of its spirited exuberance and zest for life.
Boren Banner Series: Natalie Krick
Through April 6
In her new suite of collages, Natalie Krick deconstructs pictures of Marilyn Monroe from Bert Stern’s book The Complete Last Sitting, complicating the voyeuristic viewing imposed on its iconic subject.
Henry Hathaway
88 minutes
Screening in partnership with Frye Art Museum!
Set against the roaring backdrop of Niagara Falls, the film revolves around Rose (Marilyn Monroe), a femme fatale with secret, murderous plans for her older husband (Cotten), and a honeymooning young couple who become entangled in her ill-fated scheme. Vastly different from her often comedic roles, Marilyn’s classic dramatic performance as this diabolical and scheming woman is at once fascinating and frightening, painting a powerful portrait of human sexuality and passion.
“This isn’t a Marilyn you want to embrace and protect. As Rose, she’s alert and defiant, a woman who has defined exactly what she wants and for what she wants and has forged a plan to help her get it. This performance, among the star's finest, gives the lie to the idea that she couldn't really act. What it suggests, instead, is that Marilyn was a natural. In NIAGARA, she’s self-determined, boldly sexual, almost impossibly cruel. And still, you feel for her.” – Stephanie Zacharek, The Village Voice
Boren Banner Series: Natalie Krick
Through April 6
In her new suite of collages, Natalie Krick deconstructs pictures of Marilyn Monroe from Bert Stern’s book The Complete Last Sitting, complicating the voyeuristic viewing imposed on its iconic subject.
Set against the roaring backdrop of Niagara Falls, the film revolves around Rose (Marilyn Monroe), a femme fatale with secret, murderous plans for her older husband (Cotten), and a honeymooning young couple who become entangled in her ill-fated scheme. Vastly different from her often comedic roles, Marilyn’s classic dramatic performance as this diabolical and scheming woman is at once fascinating and frightening, painting a powerful portrait of human sexuality and passion.
“This isn’t a Marilyn you want to embrace and protect. As Rose, she’s alert and defiant, a woman who has defined exactly what she wants and for what she wants and has forged a plan to help her get it. This performance, among the star's finest, gives the lie to the idea that she couldn't really act. What it suggests, instead, is that Marilyn was a natural. In NIAGARA, she’s self-determined, boldly sexual, almost impossibly cruel. And still, you feel for her.” – Stephanie Zacharek, The Village Voice
Boren Banner Series: Natalie Krick
Through April 6
In her new suite of collages, Natalie Krick deconstructs pictures of Marilyn Monroe from Bert Stern’s book The Complete Last Sitting, complicating the voyeuristic viewing imposed on its iconic subject.
John Huston
125 minutes
Screening in partnership with Frye Art Museum!
“How do you find your way back in the dark?” This line, delivered with breathy curiosity to Clark Gable, would be the last of Marilyn Monroe’s career; it was the final film for Gable as well, who passed away before its release. THE MISFITS begins in Reno, province of the quickie divorce, where Monroe’s character has just arrived. There she befriends a boarding house matron, a widower mechanic, and an over-the-hill cowboy, all of whom, like her, have run away from their past. “Her playwright husband Arthur Miller gave her her most serious script, and if it was a flawed masterpiece, it is still a masterpiece,” wrote Lincoln Kirstein. “But THE MISFITS, unlike her other films, is not essentially about her performance, or about an artist performing. It is about the almost pornographic horror of a famous man who is actually dying and a famous woman who is having a nervous breakdown.”
"When icons Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe spend their last two hours on screen slowly fading away before our very eyes, real life myths spill over into celluloid immortality. As we watch these two titans of cinematic history accept their fate and ride off towards the big star up above, it’s hard to know whether to feel comforted in their resolution with accepting the inevitable. THE MISFITS is one of those screamingly hopeless films that only occurs when the stars magically align." - Cormac McNamee
Boren Banner Series: Natalie Krick
Through April 6
In her new suite of collages, Natalie Krick deconstructs pictures of Marilyn Monroe from Bert Stern’s book The Complete Last Sitting, complicating the voyeuristic viewing imposed on its iconic subject.
“How do you find your way back in the dark?” This line, delivered with breathy curiosity to Clark Gable, would be the last of Marilyn Monroe’s career; it was the final film for Gable as well, who passed away before its release. THE MISFITS begins in Reno, province of the quickie divorce, where Monroe’s character has just arrived. There she befriends a boarding house matron, a widower mechanic, and an over-the-hill cowboy, all of whom, like her, have run away from their past. “Her playwright husband Arthur Miller gave her her most serious script, and if it was a flawed masterpiece, it is still a masterpiece,” wrote Lincoln Kirstein. “But THE MISFITS, unlike her other films, is not essentially about her performance, or about an artist performing. It is about the almost pornographic horror of a famous man who is actually dying and a famous woman who is having a nervous breakdown.”
"When icons Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe spend their last two hours on screen slowly fading away before our very eyes, real life myths spill over into celluloid immortality. As we watch these two titans of cinematic history accept their fate and ride off towards the big star up above, it’s hard to know whether to feel comforted in their resolution with accepting the inevitable. THE MISFITS is one of those screamingly hopeless films that only occurs when the stars magically align." - Cormac McNamee
Boren Banner Series: Natalie Krick
Through April 6
In her new suite of collages, Natalie Krick deconstructs pictures of Marilyn Monroe from Bert Stern’s book The Complete Last Sitting, complicating the voyeuristic viewing imposed on its iconic subject.
