The Weinstein Company will release it in early November, but the New York Film Festival 2011 has announced the world premiere of Simon Curtis‘ My Week With Maryiln.
The drama stars Michelle Williams, Eddie Redmayne, Kenneth Branagh, Judi Dench, Dominic Cooper, Emma Watson, Julia Ormond, Dougray Scott, Zoe Wanamaker, Toby Jones, Philip Jackson, Geraldine Somerville, Derek Jacobi, and Simon Russell Beale.
The film follows Redmayne as Colin Clark, an assistant on the set of Monroe’s The Prince and the Showgirl, in which she starred with Sir Laurence Olivier (played by Branagh). It is based on a previously missing diary from Clark, in which he escorted the star on a week-long getaway.
The fest also announced showings of William Wyler’s Ben-Hur (an 8K digital restoration) and Nicholas Ray’s We Can’t Go Home Again. We previously reported the opening night film will be Roman Polanski’s Carnage, starring Kate Winslet, John C. Reilly, Jodie Foster and Christoph Waltz. Check out the press release below.
New York, NY, August 4, 2011 – The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced today that Simon Curtis’ MY WEEK WITH MARILYN will make its World Premiere as the Centerpiece Gala selection, screening at Alice Tully Hall on Sunday, October 9 for the upcoming 49th New York Film Festival (September 30 – October 16).
“After seeing Marilyn Monroe so often portrayed in films as a caricature, it is a pleasure to see this complex personality and unique on-screen presence portrayed so well by such a talented actress as Michelle Williams,” says Richard Peña, Selection Committee Chair & Program Director, The Film Society of Lincoln Center.
Based on Colin Clark’s diaries, MY WEEK WITH MARILYN, is set in the early summer of 1956, when a 23 year-old Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne), just down from Oxford and determined to make his way in the film business, worked as a lowly assistant on the set of THE PRINCE AND THE SHOWGIRL. It was the film that famously united Sir Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) and Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams), who was also on honeymoon with her new husband, the playwright Arthur Miller (Dougray Scott).
Nearly 40 years on, Clark’s diary account The Prince, the Showgirl and Me was published, but one week was missing – which was published some years later as My Week with Marilyn. This is the story of that week. When Arthur Miller leaves England, the coast is clear for Clark to introduce Monroe to some of the pleasures of British life; an idyllic week in which he escorted a Monroe who was desperate to get away from her retinue of Hollywood hangers-on and the pressures of work.
Produced by David Parfitt, the Weinstein Company release also stars Dominic Cooper, Judi Dench, Julia Ormond, Zoe Wanamaker, Emma Watson, Toby Jones, Philip Jackson, Geraldine Somerville, Derek Jacobi and Simon Russell Beale. The film is set for a November 4 release.
NYFF will also feature an exciting lineup of Masterworks presentations including a special screening of an 8K Digital restored version of William Wyler’s sword and sandals epic BEN-HUR (1959), Nicholas Ray’s WE CAN’T GO HOME AGAIN (1973) and an ambitious celebration of the upcoming 100th Anniversary of Japan’s Nikkatsu Films featuring screenings of 36 films including classics such as Kon Ichikawa’s THE BURMESE HARP (1956), Masahiro Makino’s SINGING LOVE BIRDS (1936), Ko Nakahira’s CRAZED FRUIT (1956), Shohei Imamura’s PIGS AND BATTLESHIPS (1961) and Seijun Suzuki’s TOKYO DRIFTER (1966).
The screening of the recently restored version of Wyler’s classic BEN-HUR will show off the epic starring Charlton Heston and arguably the greatest chariot race put on film via an 8K Digital print which returns the film back to its original aspect ratio. Ray’s seldom seen experimental film WE CAN’T GO HOME AGAIN was originally made in collaboration with the late director’s film students and was the subject of subsequent editing by Ray before his death in 1979. Ray’s widow supervised the restoration of the “multi-narrative” film, bordering between film and visual arts, which was conceived as a teaching tool – instructing filmmaking through practice versus theory.