My Week With Marilyn (2011)

This movie is based on memoirs by Colin Clark. In 1956, Marilyn Monroe came to Britain to make the ill-fated comedy 'The Prince and the Showgirl' at Pinewood Studios with Laurence Olivier--portrayed in glorious performances by Kenneth Branagh and Michelle Williams as Olivier and Monroe. The whole movie is seen from the standpoint of the film's star-struck third assistant director, Colin Clark, son of the great art historian Kenneth, and younger brother of the notorious Tory MP Alan. The movie-mad kid had manged to get a job in Olivier's production office, been hired as a go-for on the movie, and something in him caught the eye of Marilyn herself. With her genius for enslaving dazzled men to a courtier's life of gallantry and self-abasement, she made him her confidant and helpmate. Eddie Redmayne does a very good job as Colin, but the scene is utterly stolen from him in various ways by the two above-the-title players. Branagh is tremendous as Olivier: this is a part he was born to play. However, in art as in life, Olivier's spotlight is taken away by Marilyn, played terrifically well by Williams. The film shows how sexual intrigue can be such a compulsion on a film set that it must always find an outlet somewhere, somehow. Everyone might have expected a sexy spark between Olivier and Monroe but it was not to be because they were both so needy, both so used to adoration. So the sexiness is displaced on to the hapless Colin himself. Lucky him. The story is an old one, but it is well told, and the acting is sensational. Add to that the location. Filming took place at Saltwood Castle, White Waltham Airfield, and on locations in and around London. Curtis also used the same studio in which Monroe shot The Prince and the Showgirl in 1956. This is not a movie that will teach you anything but it is fabulously fun to watch.