The collaboration between Nicolas Roeg and his wife Theresa Russell is one of the greatest between a director and an actress in film history, ranking right up there with Sternberg/Dietrich and Griffith/Gish. This is one of the fruits. Russell is "The Actress" (Marilyn Monroe) in a phantasmagoric nightpiece that brings together her, Albert Einstein, Senator Joe McCarthy, and Joe Dimaggio in a 1950s New York hotel during the filming of The Seven-Year Itch. The encounters between the four are mind-bending and richly entertaining, especially Monroe's delirious explanation of the special theory of relativity, using toy trains and balloons, for a delighted Einstein. (Monroe was a closet want-to-be intellectual, surprisingly well-read and capable of thoughtful comments in interviews.) Roeg's directing style is rich, propulsive, wonderfully matched to the material (which began as a stage play, although there's nothing the least stagy here, or gratuitously "opened out", either). The apocalyptic finale is fully the equal of the most comparable scene I can think of, the house-destruction at the end of Antonioni's Zabriskie Point. A not-to-be-missed experience. (By the way: what has become of Russell? Like Debra Winger, another of the great talents of her generation and her acting partner in Black Widow, she has hit her forties and Hollywood responds by giving these amazing performers nothing whatsoever to do. It's a darn shame. I'd look for Russell in more Roeg films, of course, but he seems to be in hiding too.)
Review of Insignificance
