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Rating: As if by chance, yesterday I happened to read this review that at the time stirred up quite a buzz.
https://www.debaser.it/allan-grant/marilyn-monroe/recensione
Just last night I watched a film with Marilyn Monroe (it was scheduled, I didn't decide to watch it after reading the review).
The Italian title is simply pathetic... it hints at cheap erotica, winks at racy titillations, but the film is anything but... yet I imagine it was (randomly) chosen to imbue the aura of charm, beauty, mystery, sensuality, eroticism, and so on of the divine MM.
At the time 26 years old (she would die at 36) MM had already been in about twenty films!
The original title (Don't Bother to Knock) is certainly more fitting.
Yes, because it is precisely MM who suggests we should not worry and knock on her door, even if it's not her home door.
It is the door of a Grand Hotel room, luxurious stuff. Room 809, eighth floor. However, MM is not a millionaire guest, she is just a babysitter for the evening. Her uncle has been working in this hotel for many years and a wealthy couple has to attend an important dinner down in the hall. They have a 7-8-year-old daughter, Bunny. So Nell (MM) plays babysitter for the evening to scrape together a few dollars.
Nell is a knockout. Beautiful, flirtatious, dirt-poor but in love with luxury, perfumes, jewelry... so beautiful and so frivolous.
Things seem to be going pretty smoothly with little Bunny, although Nell is a bit annoyed, let's say kids are not her forte or maybe there's something else, much more.
For example, there is a man (Richard Weedt Widmark) who notices the splendid Nell from the window across the way and decides to get in touch with her...
For example, Nell is crazy.
Strongly dramatic thriller based on a novel by Charlotte Armstrong, an American writer of mystery novels.
The screenplay is by Daniel Taradash who would win an Oscar the following year for the screenplay of From Here to Eternity.
Directed by Roy Ward Baker. In later years, he would mostly direct B-movies, but the film is well-directed and boasts an exceptional cast.
This is the film that saw the debut of the great Anne Bancroft, then 21 years old (but she seems older than Marilyn who is instead 26).
It is a film that confirms the decent acting skills of the divine (wrongly considered poor by most), perhaps in the most disturbing and tormented role of her career.
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