This was surprisingly pleasant. It is a charming and effervescent treat. I had not expected too much from this – it falls way down the list of gems in both George Cukor’s and Marilyn Monroe’s filmography. But it turned out to be a light and entertaining musical.

Jean-Marc Clement (Yves Montand) is a billionaire. He comes from a long line of family millionaires. It is fair to say he is comfortable with wealth: filthy comfortable. It is 1960, and he is French, so naturally the ladies fall at his feet. And the wad in his wallet guarantees there is always a laughing audience for his terrible jokes. But his playboy lifestyle becomes the topic of an off-Broadway satire. And the…

I love the BBC Genome site. It's such a handy tool. I know I'd seen Let's Make Love just once before as a kid and remember it being on BBC2 on a Sunday afternoon. Turns out it was 26th November, 1989. It's mad to think it's twenty-eight years since I saw this - or that I was just ten at the time - because I remember much of it quite clearly, and watching it again today, so many scenes felt really familiar - notably Yves Montand's comedy mime.

Ah yes, Yves Montand. Not anyone's first choice for a leading man in a Hollywood musical comedy starring Marilyn Monroe by any stretch - and indeed screenwriter Norman Krasna originally wanted Gregory…

Let's Make Love is a flighty thing, one whose comedy never makes good on the promise of its absolutely loopy prologue, and you're never really going to make me care that he top 1% can't find true love because the money gets in the way. That said, this is all about Marilyn Munroe singing and dancing in the sexiest possible musical numbers, and being gorgeous, innocent and wise besides. I love her in this. Yves Montand is variable as the billionaire playboy trying desperately to pass off as a poor actor so he can get Munroe's attention, funny at times, but the film's fear of making unsympathetic (he is, after all, using his money to trick himself into a girl's…

I give Let's Make Love a wobbly 3 stars, as wobbly was Marilyn Monroe was during the filming of this movie. She hit a sharp decline in her life and in her career. She was constantly absent and late, and she drove everyone nuts as her tenuous grip inexorably loosened.

Her Marilyn Monroe persona was so well ingrained that despite being high or hung-over or just plain terrified, she is able to fall back into its arms and pull off that wide-eyed juicy sexuality that was her trademark. What her performance lacks is the masterful comedic timing and complex knowing innocence that underpinned her best performances.
Here Marilyn comes off more like a simple-minded, golden-hearted, wet vagina with aspirations.

Yves…

A entrada do Milton Berle como professor no filme traz uma corporalidade até então inexistente para o Jean-Marc Clement, fisicamente desengonçado e incapaz de aprender. A graça de Berle é a técnica, a simplicidade da performance, a espontaneidade da execução (naqueles termos inalcançável para o executivo). Em uma cena brilhante, frente ao fracasso vemos o poder do dinheiro em ação: o próprio Milton Berle aparece no ensaio para elogiar o contratante disfarçado e a opinião comprada convence a todos de que Alexander Dumas é bom. Só que Berle consegue também dar corpo a contradição de elogiar o número visivelmente ruim, com o exagero dos risos e dos comentários e de como se força de maneira desconfortável e cínica naquele lugar…