Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)
Directed by Howard Hawks
Lorelei Lee is a beautiful showgirl engaged to be married to the wealthy Gus Esmond, much to the disapproval of Gus' rich father, Esmond Sr., who thinks that Lorelei is just after his money. When Lorelei goes on a cruise accompanied only by her best friend, Dorothy Shaw, Esmond Sr. hires Ernie Malone, a private detective, to follow her and report any questionable behavior that would disqualify her from the marriage.
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What critics compared Gentlemen Prefer Blondes to
In its impressively lavish and often spot-on visual recreations of the makings of Monroe classics such as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Some Like it Hot , we are party to her well-documented increasing turmoil.
Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)
Directed by Cathy Yan
Visuals
There is a slapdash energy to the material that keeps it humming along for the most part and when Yan gets a chance to ditch the narrative and let her freak flag fly—such as a dream sequence that rescores the famous “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend” number from “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” with machine guns and S&M gear and the scene where Harley attacks a police station with an array of glitter guns that suggests “The Terminator” as directed by Bob Mackie—the results are undeniably memorable.
By contrast, the hallucination sequence with Harley re-creating the “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” number from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is something that could have been either performed in full or cut.
Yan and cinematographer Matthew Libatique (The Fountain, Black Swan) give the movie its rancid-sugar fizz, from the way Day-Glo graffiti embellishes freeze frames of certain characters to a dazed musical fantasy sequence in which Harley performs a wonky variation on Marilyn Monroe’s famous “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend” number from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
Equal parts Olivier Assays� demonlover and Howard Hawks� Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Jean-Claude Brisseau�s Secret Things is an exaggerated fable of sexual politics and comic elegance.
Pugh is especially effective in her scene, which you could see in an odd way as a precursor to Marilyn Monroe's argument for marrying a wealthy man in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes."
Try last year’s apocalypse movie — Michael Haneke’s Time of the Wolf.
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Not since Henry Spofford III, at a similar age, hit on Marilyn Monroe’s character, in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” (1953), has precocity been such a gas.
Not since the days of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire has women's morally dubious pursuit of wealth been so much fun.
Sixty-five years ago, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes offered a defense of gold-digging, wondering aloud how women desiring money is any different from men desiring sex.
Seeing Zeta-Jones and Zellweger together, the latter with her Bridget Jones plumpness starved off, I had hoped for something like the brash title sequence of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: a contrast of girl-power styles, between blonde fluffiness and brunette ballsiness.
Some early humor comes from MacGregor packing like Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes , with trunk after trunk of toiletries and apparel for every occasion, most of which Frank tosses overboard.
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I remember the joy of reading David Thomson’s entry on Howard Hawks, in “A Biographical Dictionary of Film”; the principle underlying Hawks’s work, Thomson argued, was that “Men are more expressive rolling a cigarette than saving the world,” and his adage rings true far beyond “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” or “The Big Sleep.”