Don't Bother to Knock

Don't Bother to Knockⁱ was doubtless intended as a vehicle for launching Monroe's dramatic career. Visibly every possible careⁱⁱ has been taken towards this single, over-arching purpose. This was supposed to be it! Her break, her big fat break into "serious acting". Her great establishment as an actually intellectual participant in productions listing her name, not mere decoration. That ancient dream of womanhoodⁱⁱⁱ, you know how it goes.

It doesn't work out ; sadly Marylin is by herself and on her own power too simple, intellectually^iv, too earnestly close to brutish bios to manage passing herself off as even such a charicature of zoon^v as a mere goffy teenager! By the end of it the situation of Widmark's character in the production, paternally supporting a broken husk of a young girl exactly mirrors the situation of Widmark himself, just as paternally supporting the remains of a catastrophically failed attempt at an actress.

Yet this could've been a great film ; the scene in particular^vi where the eager filly opens the blind for the n-th time, after "strict refusals" in the inept manner, and since the man's not nearly as immediate in his response as her internal turmoil's in sensation she flicks them, repeatedly, quickly, like for a lighthouse sui generis, in her own mind ; and then he looks, o joy o boy o glory-days he looked at her!!! so she turns, because yes ? She's an idiot ; and then wills the phone into ringing. How many idiots, just like her, misused telephones, a man's tool^vii in just that subhuman, purely African manner ? Hm ? And how ashamed were you of it, I mean before reading on Trilema to find out that yes, others know your secret ? HM ?

It could've been a great film, with an actual young woman in it ; da' cu caprita care este... mnoa.

1. 1952, by Roy W Baker, with Marilyn Monroe, Richard Widmark, Anne Bancroft, Jeanne Cagney. [↩]
2. The script was very much written with this in mind, and from the get-go ; the casting even, I can't think of a more supportive, a more tolerant, a more fundamentally hired hand lead than Widmark. Even the interplay between this state of the facts and the writing's evident : the character's written so as to conceal the actual situation of the actor, a fine sartor's move. If I didn't know Taradash's from Luisville, KY (or Kentville, LA, whoever the fuck remembers the impossible mixings of inland America) I would lay thick odds towards his being an old NY tenement slum jew long gone blind on concealed surfile. [↩]
3. Yes, all children crawl out of some woman, at some point in their life ; but did any woman yet have anything intelligent to say to them ? Are you sure ?

   The problem'd be that she's a participant, yes, but for the warmth, for the milk, for the "love", "unquestioning", right ? "Devoted" ? She's supposed to love her kids and not ask questions, it's how the biology of it works ; but... is that enough ? What can she possibly do ? What happens if she tries ? [↩]

4. This film has triggered an examination, and reviewing my familiarity with her I would guess she was sub-normal, intellectually, I'd say in that 96 to 98 IQ band that so irks description. It'd definitely explain her misery in life, seeing how the men likely valued her very differently in the evening and in the morning thereafter. It has relatively little to do with sex per se, and a lot to do with the sad misfortune of being mentally marginal, teetering perpetually on the very brink of that chasm. [↩]
5. I use the online services as substitute for unicoding my keyboards, but... here, let's have some lulz together :

   [↩]

6. But not exclusively. Overall the depiction of organic mental illness is not merely formally correct but unmisguidingly expressive, as far as the materials of that expression allow. [↩]
7. Hey man, telephones are no joke. [↩]