Sunday, June 23, 4:00 pm, Castro Theatre
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| Making Montgomery Clift |
Montgomery Clift (b. 1920-10-17, d. 1966-07-23) was one of the best known Hollywood heartthrobs of his generation, but died at age 45. The myth-making machine immediately cast him as a tragic figure, tormented by his closeted sexuality, driven to alcohol and drug addiction and an inevitable untimely death. Clift’s youngest nephew, Robert A. Clift, born a few years after his uncle’s death, draws upon not only interviews with Clift’s biographer and some of his contemporaries, but also a wealth of family archive material, including home movies and numerous audio recordings (some probably made without the knowledge of the other parties), to draw a very different portrait of the actor, a man who was both a confident artist and a self-possessed gay (or bisexual) man.
This film is as much a cautionary tale about biographies of famous people as it is a portrait of Montgomery Clift himself. Clift’s first biographer, Robert LaGuardia, included material and quotes that the family insisted were fabricated from whole cloth. The second biographer, Patricia Bosworth, was much more solicitous of the family, but she still got significant details wrong, for instance casting Clift’s interest in men as an interest in boys, and failed to make important corrections to her book. With two best-selling books casting Clift as a self-destructive tragic figure, it is doubly difficult to pierce the myth and find the authentic truth underneath.
Whether you’re a fan of Montgomery Clift, or more broadly that era of Hollywood, or you are just interested in the process of creating the biography of a movie star, this film is a MUST SEE.
• IMDb •
This film is as much a cautionary tale about biographies of famous people as it is a portrait of Montgomery Clift himself. Clift’s first biographer, Robert LaGuardia, included material and quotes that the family insisted were fabricated from whole cloth. The second biographer, Patricia Bosworth, was much more solicitous of the family, but she still got significant details wrong, for instance casting Clift’s interest in men as an interest in boys, and failed to make important corrections to her book. With two best-selling books casting Clift as a self-destructive tragic figure, it is doubly difficult to pierce the myth and find the authentic truth underneath.
Whether you’re a fan of Montgomery Clift, or more broadly that era of Hollywood, or you are just interested in the process of creating the biography of a movie star, this film is a MUST SEE.
• IMDb •
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