I’m lucky indeed to live in a place where movies are part of
the landscape. And I’m doubly lucky because I’m a member of the Motion Picture
Academy’s new museum, which takes pride in investigating the culture of movies
from every angle. Since its opening in 2021, I’ve been to the Academy Museum
multiple times, exploring movies in terms of their artistry, their
technological mastery, and their impact upon world culture.
The Academy Museum hardly ignores the motion pictures that
represent foreign lands. I remember an exhibit vividly showing off key clips
from the audacious Spanish writer/director Pedro Almodóvar. Currently, there’s
a lovely tribute to Hayao Miyazaki’s charming animated Ponyo, as well as
an in-depth look at the career of Korean auteur Bong Joon Ho, the brilliant
satirist behind Okja and the Oscar-winning Parasite.
Still, the museum is fundamentally in and of Hollywood, and
so you can rightly expect that many exhibits will focus on the men and women of
the Hollywood studio system. (A newish permanent exhibit highlights the
building of studio lots in the still-wide-open Southern California landscape,
as well as the background of the men—several of them immigrants—who arrived in
town with a gleam in their eyes and began to create an industry.) And some of
the museum’s most lavish exhibits delve into the making of Hollywood’s greatest
hits as well as the careers of Hollywood’s most indelible stars.
Set to close soon is an appropriately massive exhibit on the making and marketing of Jaws.
(No surprise that this blockbuster is given star treatment, given that its
director—Steven Spielberg—has been a generous supporter of the museum since its
inception. And the surviving 25-foot fiberglass model of the film’s
arch-villain, Bruce the Shark, permanently hangs over the museum’s escalator to
give visitors a quick thrill.) It was
fascinating to discover how the timely improvisation of the three central
actors helped bring to life Peter Benchley’s novel, but I equally enjoyed my
glimpses of the film’s global marketing campaign. It featured Jaws foreign language posters (the one
from Japan, riffing on a hugely famous Hokusai woodblock print, is particularly
clever) as well as zany collectors’ items like a shark-shaped souvenir cup with
a straw that looks like a hapless swimmer.
Though Jaws is going bye-bye, there’s a new and
extensive salute to Marilyn Monroe, Hollywood Icon. For those who associate
Monroe solely with her sexy role in Some Like It Hot or with the gossip
surrounding her connection with President John F. Kennedy, it’s refreshing to
focus in on other aspects of her talents. Though she certainly nourished her siren
image, the off-screen Monroe was a serious reader who worked hard to polish her
dramatic skills. The exhibit includes, along with some fabulous spangled gowns,
the casual streetwear she preferred when she was not in front of the cameras.
By happenstance, I’d just re-watched The Seven Year Itch, the (slightly
toned-down) film version of a naughty Broadway hit about a middle-aged
husband—home alone for the summer—who fantasizes abut the sexy young woman
living upstairs. Tom Ewell, a terrifically average-looking comic actor, was the
male lead on both stage and screen. In the film version, the dream girl was
played by Monroe, as a charming though slightly dizzy blonde languishing in the
heat of her top-floor digs. This is the film in which her flouncy white dress
billows up when she stands over a subway grate. But the museum also displays
the modest pink pjs she wears when invited downstairs for a nightcap, thus
crushing Ewell’s erotic expectations.
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| Japanese "woodblock" ad for "Jaws" |
Marilyn's PJs in "The Seven Year Itch"
