HOME |  CULT MOVIES | COMPETITIONS | ADVERTISE |  CONTACT US |  ABOUT US
 
 
 
Newest Reviews
American Fiction
Poor Things
Thunderclap
Zeiram
Legend of the Bat
Party Line
Night Fright
Pacha, Le
Kimi
Assemble Insert
Venus Tear Diamond, The
Promare
Beauty's Evil Roses, The
Free Guy
Huck and Tom's Mississippi Adventure
Rejuvenator, The
Who Fears the Devil?
Guignolo, Le
Batman, The
Land of Many Perfumes
Cat vs. Rat
Tom & Jerry: The Movie
Naked Violence
Joyeuses Pacques
Strangeness, The
How I Became a Superhero
Golden Nun
Incident at Phantom Hill
Winterhawk
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City
Maigret Sets a Trap
B.N.A.
Hell's Wind Staff, The
Topo Gigio and the Missile War
Battant, Le
Penguin Highway
Cazadore de Demonios
Snatchers
Imperial Swordsman
Foxtrap
   
 
Newest Articles
3 From Arrow Player: Sweet Sugar, Girls Nite Out and Manhattan Baby
Little Cat Feat: Stephen King's Cat's Eye on 4K UHD
La Violence: Dobermann at 25
Serious Comedy: The Wrong Arm of the Law on Blu-ray
DC Showcase: Constantine - The House of Mystery and More on Blu-ray
Monster Fun: Three Monster Tales of Sci-Fi Terror on Blu-ray
State of the 70s: Play for Today Volume 3 on Blu-ray
The Movie Damned: Cursed Films II on Shudder
The Dead of Night: In Cold Blood on Blu-ray
Suave and Sophisticated: The Persuaders! Take 50 on Blu-ray
Your Rules are Really Beginning to Annoy Me: Escape from L.A. on 4K UHD
A Woman's Viewfinder: The Camera is Ours on DVD
Chaplin's Silent Pursuit: Modern Times on Blu-ray
The Ecstasy of Cosmic Boredom: Dark Star on Arrow
A Frosty Reception: South and The Great White Silence on Blu-ray
You'll Never Guess Which is Sammo: Skinny Tiger and Fatty Dragon on Blu-ray
Two Christopher Miles Shorts: The Six-Sided Triangle/Rhythm 'n' Greens on Blu-ray
Not So Permissive: The Lovers! on Blu-ray
Uncomfortable Truths: Three Shorts by Andrea Arnold on MUBI
The Call of Nostalgia: Ghostbusters Afterlife on Blu-ray
Moon Night - Space 1999: Super Space Theater on Blu-ray
Super Sammo: Warriors Two and The Prodigal Son on Blu-ray
Sex vs Violence: In the Realm of the Senses on Blu-ray
What's So Funny About Brit Horror? Vampira and Bloodbath at the House of Death on Arrow
Keeping the Beatles Alive: Get Back
   
 
  Insignificance Marilyn Monroe On Fire
Year: 1985
Director: Nicolas Roeg
Stars: Michael Emil, Theresa Russell, Gary Busey, Tony Curtis, Will Sampson, Patrick Kilpatrick, Ian O'Connell, George Holmes, Richard M. Davidson, Mitchell Greenberg, Reynor Scheine, Jude Ciccolella, Lou Hirsch, Ray Charleson, Joel Cutrara
Genre: Comedy, Drama, WeirdoBuy from Amazon
Rating:  7 (from 1 vote)
Review: The Actress (Theresa Russell) is shooting her movie's big scene tonight on the streets of New York City, where she has been asked to stand over a subway grate so the draught will blow her skirt up. Everyone hopes it will be a celebrated scene, and under the grate with a wind machine are a pair of technicians who get quite the view when she poses over them: one says, "I saw the face of God!" But once the shoot is over, the Actress is dissatisfied, and asks her chauffeur to drive her around as she picks up various trinkets - including his wristwatch. However, she has heard The Professor (Michael Emil) is in town for a peace conference...

There have been many biopics that postulate how famous folks might have lived their lives, often inventing scenarios for stars to act out whether they are accurate or otherwise, but not many went for the option director Nicolas Roeg tried here with an adaptation of Terry Johnson's eccentric play. The conceit was that one sweltering night in New York, four icons of the mid-twentieth century found their lives intersecting, two because they were married to each other, and another two for political reasons. Basically, Marilyn Monroe wants to meet Albert Einstein, but her husband Joe DiMaggio and Senator Joseph McCarthy throw a spanner in the works.

You imagine that with CGI there are aspiring movie producers dreaming up premises to cast computer graphics of deceased but famous celebrities in their prime and getting them to interact, but Insignificance was the closest you could reach that in live action, for the nineteen-eighties at least. Also, you cannot imagine many filmmakers would want to cast Einstein and Marilyn in a film this arthouse, as most would think more along the lines of a wacky comedy like forgotten nineties romance I.Q., also a story that featured Einstein as a character. But the thing was here, Johnson avoided naming any of the quartet as the notables they were supposed to be.

You would find out why if you watched, as not only were these fictional incarnations more present for their place in American, and indeed world, history, but they got up to activities that would not have been in their biographies. McCarthy (an enthusiastic Tony Curtis) especially has been painted as a villain and rampant ego monster in the years since his very public downfall from anti-Communist crusader to criminal muckraker, but whatever else he may have done, he did not punch Marilyn in the midriff and cause her to miscarry. Though he may well have visited a prostitute in his hotel room and dissolved in tears when he couldn't get it up after grappling with her, you get the idea, this was rife with imaginative conjecture and outright fanciful invention.

Although Emil came closest to embodying the personality of Einstein as we imagined him to be, his brilliant mind always ticking over but suffering in the background from his responsibility for the nuclear bombs that loomed large at the end of World War Two and throughout the Cold War, the other three were closer to caricature. Gary Busey as DiMaggio was effectively a big lug, obsessed with either his status as a great baseball player, or the idea his wife Marilyn is cheating on him, which was doing down the real person, and though you may not lose sleep over McCarthy's careerist invasions of privacy here, Russell was evidently a little too keen to keep up her breathy Monroe voice than deliver a three-dimensional human being. That may have been the point, of course, these people belonged to the public's perception of them and anything more personal would be neglected: Marilyn the sexpot, Albert the egghead, and so on. Yet the bomb casts a shadow over them all, leading to a remarkable ending unlike anything else in cinema, worth sticking around for if all the relativity chat loses you. Music by Stanley Myers.

[Network release this as part of The British Film (as it is indeed British) with these features:

That's Insignificance: 1984 making-of featurette
Gone Roeg/Imitation of a Scene: fifty minutes of new interview material on the making of Insignificance
Alternative audio track featuring Stanley Myers' isolated musical score
Theatrical trailer
Image gallery
Limited edition booklet written by Neil Sinyard
Hard of hearing subtitles.]
Reviewer: Graeme Clark

 

This review has been viewed 1324 time(s).

As a member you could Rate this film

 

Nicolas Roeg  (1928 - 2018)

An acclaimed British cinematographer on sixties films such as Dr Crippen, Masque of the Red Death, Fahrenheit 451, Petulia and Far From the Madding Crowd, Roeg turned co-director with Performance. The seventies were a golden age for Roeg's experimental approach, offering up Walkabout, Don't Look Now, The Man Who Fell To Earth and Bad Timing, but by the eighties his fractured style fell out of favour with Eureka, Insignificance and Track 29. The Witches was an unexpected children's film, but the 1990s and beyond saw him working mostly in television.

 
Review Comments (0)


Untitled 1

Login
  Username:
 
  Password:
 
   
 
Forgotten your details? Enter email address in Username box and click Reminder. Your details will be emailed to you.
   

Latest Poll
Which star probably has psychic powers?
Laurence Fishburne
Nicolas Cage
Anya Taylor-Joy
Patrick Stewart
Sissy Spacek
Michelle Yeoh
Aubrey Plaza
Tom Cruise
Beatrice Dalle
Michael Ironside
   
 
   

Recent Visitors
Darren Jones
Mark Le Surf-hall
Enoch Sneed
  Louise Hackett
Andrew Pragasam
Mary Sibley
Graeme Clark
  Desbris M
   

 

Last Updated: