Aside from the simple pleasure of Marilyn Monroe jostling
about in vivid color as she struggles with various unruly outfits, The Prince and the Showgirl is
remarkably stagy, awkward and simply uninteresting. It seems clear that everyone concerned banked
on the teaming up of the world’s greatest Shakespearean actor and Hollywood’s
biggest star would draw audiences whether or not there was anything substantial
to keep them in their seats. Olivier was
a great actor for sure, but he was a mediocre director, and his obvious
contempt for cinema made him approach all of his stodgy adaptations with
arrogance instead of humility. (Compare
his Hamlet with Orson Welles’ Macbeth, both 1948, for a startling
contrast between a dour, flat aesthetic and a mesmerizing, challenging and
invigorating style that pushes film techniques to their limits.) I guess the source material, a play by
Terrence Rattigan, is supposed to be charming and romantic in an upper crust
kind of way, but all I could focus on was the dullness of Olivier’s direction
and the lack of any chemistry between him and Monroe.
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