Marilyn, dernières séances (2008 TV Movie) User Reviews

Revealing, beautiful and sentimental.

[ilpohirvonen · 8/10 · 30 November 2009]

A very good documentary about the icon of Hollywood, Marilyn Monroe. This documentary takes the viewer to Marilyn's life full of glamour and private despair.

The documentary builds around Marilyn's therapy sessions with a psychoanalyst Ralph Greenson in the years 1960-1962. She started to go to these sessions during the film Let's Make Love (1960). The sessions lasted for 30 months and they became an obsession to Marilyn.

Greenson had started the sessions to save the star, but he has been considered as one of the reasons to her death. Greenson was the last who saw her alive and the first who saw her dead. Did the psychoanalysis have something to do with the death? Find out and watch.

It uses archive-material brilliantly with a narrator-voice throughout the documentary.

Recommended to everyone interested in Marilyn Monroe and her death. The documentary is very revealing and through that, very interesting.

Far and away one of the best documentaries out there.

[fallonsoleilb · 9/10 · 15 February 2021]

I haven't seen many documentaries that have stayed with me as much as this one has. Reflective, tragic, beautiful, and well-written. It poses an interesting question about Marilyn's death: did delving into her psyche contribute to her early death? That's the question that this documentary poses, but it does not get embroiled in conspiracy theories like so many other Marilyn Monroe documentaries do. Truly a thoughtful reflection on a troubled icon who left us too soon.

Tabloid-like tat

[scriptfindermike · 2/10 · 4 August 2012]

I was quickly disappointed with this documentary.

In the English language version the overly-dramatic commentary that features so heavily in it was soon making me 'tut' in annoyance at what was being said. Much of it sounds like someone reading from a self-important-trying-to-be-clever-look-how-'good'-my-writing-is version of a Daily Mail article. Full of over-dramatised, gossip-laden, fact-absent, sensationalist, shock-horror, sex-obsessed hyperbole.

All throughout, Marilyn's life is clumsily compared to a chess-game: a chess-game that 'finished without a winner', so the annoying narrator unreliably informs us at the end. Earlier on, we hear that Marilyn's mother is the black queen, the Kennedys are the two bishops, Greenson is the knight - 'black or white?' - and Marilyn herself is the white queen. What a load of tosh! I wish I could recall more lines from the narrator's commentary - they're so shockingly bad in places that clearly my consciousness has immediately filed them in the bin.

The only thing worth watching this tabloid-like film for is the footage of Marilyn and is the only reason I gave it two stars. Watch it muted and you'll enjoy it more.

What a horrible mess......

[frank_raijmakers · 1/10 · 5 August 2010]

What a horrible mess. The 1 star, is only for Marilyn, who left us so many beautiful footage of which you see some in this film. This for me is the only reason to watch it.

The story is such a blur of facts and fiction, blown out of proportion accompanied with footage randomly picket only for dramatic effect. Throughout the whole film you hear this very annoying "i'm sorry" sung by Brenda lee. Why? To show us the chocking picture from Marilyn at the morgue was not very classy nor was it necessary to show us the sex movie she never did.

Instead of just playing the tape and let us listen to Marilyn speak about herself, you hear short bits and pieces of it used out of context and quickly taken over by a voice over who continues in her place.

All in all this film pretense to lift the veil of secrecy on Marilyn Monroe, but does the opposite: fabricating a more mysterious mess then ever before. Once again making money wins over paying tribute and respect. 48 Years after she died Marilyn Monroe is still being exploited .