MARILYN TIMES FIVE  

1968-1973, 16mm, b&w/sound, 13.5min.

With Arline Hunter

"A young woman, allegedly Marilyn Monroe, is seen with pitiless scrutiny in the arena of an old girlie film. The reiteration of five cycles rotates the commodity of her moon-pale body as her song repeats five times on the sound track ... 'I'm through with love.' The last shot terminates a final reward of stillness as she is seen crumpled on the floor."

– Anthony Reveaux

The image, or Anima, of Marilyn Monroe was not owned by Norma Jean any more than it was owned by Arline Hunter. Images can sometimes have more power than the person they represent. Some cultures consider that an image steals the soul or spirit of the person depicted. They will dwindle and die. MARILYN TIMES FIVE is an equation not intended to be completed by the film alone. The viewer completes the equation.


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MARILYN TIMES FIVE
SENSES OF CINEMA | Marilyn Times Five
MARILYN TIMES FIVE

Bruce Conner’s film career began explosively in 1958 with the release of a 12-minute black-and-white film simply titled A Movie, composed exclusively of found footage material. What made the film an iconographic component of American avant-garde cinema was Conner’s exquisite editing and his ability to craft a moving image artwork that was at once an incisive, if elusive, critique of American pomposity and a profound meditation on visual rhythms and textures. Conner went on to create an inimical body of work that includes more than 20 remarkable avant-garde films before his death in 2008, and his acute critical eye contributed to a larger fascination with media-based analysis that continues to thrive today.

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MARILYN TIMES FIVE
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MARILYN TIMES FIVE
FILM QUARTERLY | Marilyn Times Five
MARILYN TIMES FIVE

Marilyn, Bruce Conner’s eleventh 16mm film, is constructed of brief segments excised from two Marilyn Monroe softcore nudies of the early forties (she was about 19). The clips are few, and are repeated over and over, punctuated heavily by black spaces of opaque leader. The sound track is the song “I’m Through with Love,” which Monroe sings in Some Like It Hot—repeated five times. The images: Monroe lying down and smoothing her hair, Monroe playing with an apple, Monroe stepping out of a skirt, Monroe rolling onto her back, etc. She wears only panties. The effect is hypnotic and depressing.

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MARILYN TIMES FIVE