At the Cinémathèque, an exhibition puts Marilyn Monroe back at the heart of her acting career.

To mark the centenary of her birth, the Cinémathèque française is dedicating a major exhibition to Marilyn Monroe, on view from April 8 to July 26, 2026. The ambition is clear: to shift perspectives. It's not simply about celebrating the blonde icon who became a global image, but about placing the actress herself, her work as a performer, her place within the Hollywood system, and the narratives that ultimately confined her, back at the center. Through photographs, film clips, scripts, costumes, and archival material, the exhibition seeks to move beyond mere fascination with the star.

An exhibition that aims to separate the image of the actress

The Cinémathèque Française starts with a simple observation: Marilyn Monroe is still far more often seen as a celebrity or a sex symbol than as an actress. In comments gathered by franceinfo, curator Florence Tissot explains that the exhibition doesn't aim to make her "the greatest actress of all time," but rather proposes to consider her "as a performer," given that her star image has long obscured the true nature of her acting. This is the central theme of the exhibition: to revisit the films, the roles, and the contrasts she created on screen with the "dumb blonde" persona with which Hollywood has so enduringly associated her.

The exhibition's introductory text also emphasizes this dimension. It recalls how contemporary commentary often contributed to discrediting her as an actress, suggesting that she was merely playing up her own image. Contrary to this interpretation, the exhibition highlights the fact that Monroe prepared for her roles, carefully considered her performances, and meticulously crafted her compositions. Films such as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The Seven Year Itch, Some Like It Hot, and The Misfits are thus re-examined through the lens of this constant tension between her public persona and her artistic ambitions.

A figure forever caught between fantasy, domination, and feminist reinterpretation

The exhibition also shows that Marilyn Monroe cannot be separated from the system that created her. The Hollywood star system, the studios' promotional machinery, contradictory biographies, and the posthumous fascination with her death have produced a myth that far transcends her films. The Cinémathèque's text emphasizes how beliefs often preceded facts in the way her life story was told. Exhibiting Monroe, therefore, also means exposing the narratives that shaped, reduced, sexualized, and interpreted her.

This reinterpretation finally takes a more feminist approach. Franceinfo reminds us that Marilyn Monroe notably demanded the same pay as her male co-stars, and Florence Tissot emphasizes that feminist interpretations of her career developed primarily after the 1970s, and even more so after the Weinstein affair. She summarizes this ambivalence by saying that Marilyn Monroe “embodies a woman who seems to both control her sex appeal and, at the same time, is perceived as an object shaped for and by men.” It is precisely this contradiction that the exhibition explores: that of a woman who is simultaneously actress, product, strategist of her image, and prisoner of her own myth. More than a tribute, this exhibition thus offers a welcome reassessment of a figure we thought we knew.