The Mandarin Duck (1961) was also the last film Clark Gable had completed
The Misfits, directed by John Huston, is Marilyn Monroe's last film to be filmed. Her portrayal of Roslyn on screen is a portrayal of Marilyn herself. The two names sound a bit alike, and the heroine's emotional experience is also similar to what she has been experiencing all along. The recently divorced blonde beauty was so much like her, the men's eyes were fixed on her, but none of them really understood her. Marilyn's husband, the playwright Arthur Miller, created the character as a gift to her. He gave her such a great role, hoping that through this role, the world could see another Marilyn Monroe, a great actress, rather than a silly white and sweet blonde beauty.
Marilyn has been looking forward to such an opportunity. A pivotal role that can both impress the critics and demonstrate their abilities. In 1955, at the Actor's Studio in New York, Marilyn Monroe met Lee Strasberg, who had trained an entire generation of actors. One day, Lee Strathberg told her that she was born for Shakespeare's plays. This sentence touched her very much, because, it just so happened that she had read all of Shakespeare's works: in her eyes, he was the greatest screenwriter of all time. Can she play Lady Macbeth or Jotrude, or Juliet? She can rehearse years and years if she needs to, she'll be fully engaged, she'll be incredibly engaged, she'll be nominated for an Oscar and eventually win a trophy. All she needed was to "practice the basics," Laurence Olivier, a popular star who played Henry V, Hamlet and Charles III, once told her. She appeared with him on movie posters for The Prince and the Dancer. He promised to help her if one day she felt ready. He recited a passage of Macbeth to show her what kind of future awaited her. She had never heard such a beautiful sentence: "Life is just a walking shadow, a clumsy man who points his hands and feet on the stage, and after a few moments of appearance, he quietly retreats in silence; It is a story told by a fool, full of noise and commotion, but it cannot find any meaning. ”
"One word says life." He concluded, then laughed.
After hearing these lines, Marilyn burst into tears. This is both tears of joy and tears of sorrow: happy because she still has so wonderful things to learn; Sadness – and some contradiction – is because Shakespeare wrote about her views on life all along, and these lines gave her a wonderful feeling of being understood by Shakespeare. This feeling, Marilyn has tried countless times to write it in a book, but she always feels that she can't do it. All along, Marilyn wanted to capture the thoughts in her head to see what those thoughts really looked like. Marilyn did this only for herself, and didn't think people would read about it in the future. She thinks about the love that came and went, the love that came and went, her childhood and dreams, everything she didn't want to forget. She writes to express what is going on in her head. Sometimes, when her feelings are mixed and happiness and anxiety are mixed, she can't understand what she is thinking.
As a result, Marilyn believes that she will never be able to get rid of such reincarnation, and is afraid that others will think of her right: emotionally unstable, eager for sex, afraid of loneliness, paranoid and schizophrenic. Psychiatrists around the world are so proud of their diagnosis that some even speculate about Marilyn's inner world. However, those words obscured what she had always feared the most.
Like her mother, Gladys, and grandmother, Della, in Marilyn's family, women suffered from headaches and were eventually sent to an insane asylum. She had also spent some time in a psychiatric hospital on the recommendation of a doctor, but the doctor had not told her the specifics of the situation: the locked door, the roar of other patients through the walls. The four days she spent there were so miserable that she later spoke as if she had been imprisoned for a crime she had never committed. All she needed was to speak, to speak her mind. All along, she asked herself whether someone would be curious about what a woman thinks, whether she cares about the dreams and courage in her heart. Marilyn read James Joyce's novel Ulysses. Although she didn't read it all, she remembered Molly Bloom, remembered her voice sparkling at the end of the text, her people and her last name so matched, "blooming like flowers" in eagerness and chaos, all of which she remembered. You must go and see the end of the novel and listen to this endless sound.
Marilyn and Greenson had a close relationship. She hoped that Greenson would adopt her, and she dreamed of having a home, a traditional family, so that she could no longer be alone. Marilyn was born in California, her father abandoned her, and her mother ignored her. Marilyn spent most of her time in orphanages, foster homes, and some of her grandmother's neighbors who were willing to take care of her. Her life is about constantly working hard to maintain relationships with others and to be loved. Grinson knows it all. Greenson is a well-known doctor in the industry and a frequent visitor to the home of Hollywood movie stars. He is renowned for publishing authoritative works related to his profession. He met Marilyn in 1960, when Marilyn had been treated by two other psychotherapists, but to no avail. She even received several psychological consultations from Freud's daughter. She took a lot of drugs, was deeply troubled by insomnia, and the words in her stomach would come out, but there was no way to say it to the psychoanalyst. After several fruitless treatments, Marilyn bought a tape recorder and recorded herself hours and hours at home, in the dark of the night. These tapes were inscribed with her deepest thoughts, and she promised to give them to Greenson so that he could finally understand what he was thinking. Suddenly, everything inside her was freely expressed, her joy, her indulgence, her melancholy. Marilyn is Molly. Indulging in time and words, she was happy and free. She knew she wasn't crazy.
Work photo of "Random Mandarin Duck Spectrum"
The word "madness" appears several times in the Spectral Spectrum of Mandarin Ducks. Especially in one of them, Rosslyn screams in the desert. She hunted galloping horses with Guido, Gay, and Perce, a Nevada custom in which animals that were sold for hunting ended up as a meal for hunting dogs. When the lasso caught the horse, Roslin escaped and ran with all her strength toward the endless desert. These cowboy men are satisfied, their hands tightened the noose, and a handful of dollars can make the wasteland change its appearance in an instant, which makes her unbearable. But people can't escape the desert: it makes you think you're free, but at the same time it traps you. In the distance, Rosslyn was like a burning throbbing point. Something in her body was opened so that she could say the words that had been holding her breath all along. "You executioners! Murderer! Swindler! I hate you guys! She's not sure if the tears and distance drown out her voice. But she kept shouting, repeating the same sentence: "All of you are liars!" I hate you guys! Murderer! Guido was suddenly hurt by his self-esteem: "Crazy! She's crazy! Guy and Perce didn't respond to him. They knew that maybe she was right.
Imagine the momentary dizziness that Marilyn had when she pulled away from this scene at the end of the shoot, and the character was very well positioned, unprecedented. However, this scene is not filming. Marilyn later said those few minutes broke her down, perhaps because her emotions weren't acted. She finally knew how to use the acting skills taught by Lee Strasberg: to act well, you have to act truly. The breakdown was also due to the feeling that Arthur Miller knew herself too well – he had intended to write for her one of the most important roles of her acting career, but out of love and negligence, he accidentally wrote about her life. Marilyn tried everything to understand herself, but in the end she couldn't escape her true self: a misfit. Not only weird, but also nowhere to live. So she broke down because of the truth, because it was something she'd been secretly seeking, because she thought it was a relief. But after that, what else is there to live on?
In the distance, someone called out to her to take the next shot. A breeze blew in, and her burning skin cooled a little. Marilyn walking in the desert...
This article is excerpted from "The Ununderstood Rose: The Spontaneous Life of Eleven Women" ([French] Laura El Marqui and Pierre Grillet, translated by Huang Xun and published by Shandong People's Publishing House), with the consent of the publisher, handed over to the "PEN Club" by the translator for the first time.
Author: Huang Xun Translation
Editor: Xie Juan