Kelly's life was one of glamour, privilege and ultimately tragedy. Now,
as Grace of Monaco, the biopic starring Nicole Kidman, opens the Cannes
film festival, fresh controversy has stirred
On Wednesday the late, great beauty is to make waves on the beach at
Cannes once again, when the new biopic starring Nicole Kidman,
Grace of Monaco,
opens the 67th annual film festival. It is a controversial film before
the critics have had sight of it, because the Grimaldi family, Princess
Grace's three children by Rainier, have poured scorn on the screenplay
and because its powerful producer, Harvey Weinstein, is known to have criticised director Olivier Dahan's
handling of the material. The film, which concentrates on a relatively
short period in the life of the princess and co-stars Tim Roth as
Rainier, was to have opened last November. In January, the Weinstein
Company temporarily removed the film from its schedule.
Prince Albert and his sisters, Caroline and Stéphanie, are
not expected to attend the gala premiere. Last year, after seeing a
script, they claimed the film "contains important historical
inaccuracies as well as scenes of pure fiction". Then, last Friday, the
royal Monégasques alleged the film's trailer was farcical "and confirms
the totally fictional nature of this film". Their statement read: "The
princely family does not in any way wish to be associated with this
film, which reflects no reality, and regrets that its history has been
misappropriated for purely commercial purposes."
Whatever the motivation for making
Grace of Monaco, the film reflects an enduring interest in a woman who, as the
Observer's
former critic Philip French said this weekend, became "an important and
complex figure". When Hitchcock dreamed of his perfect, ice-cold
blonde, it was Grace Kelly
who made her luminous flesh. The director's infatuated vision of
cut-crystal allure has kept the image of the princess alive in the 32
years since her death in a car crash near her Riviera home. Her
performances in some of the most admired films of all time, from Fred
Zinneman's 1952 western
High Noon, to the unnerving
Rear Window,
placed her in the midst of Hollywood's most potent era. "She was
important to the development of the legend of Hitchcock and, in those
half a dozen films she made in five years or so in the early 1950s, she
became a key figure in film; in film criticism; in the birth of the idea
of celebrity; and even in politics," said French. "
High Noon
was a very influential film at the time of the cold war and of
McCarthyism in Hollywood. People on the left and on the right became
obsessed with it."
Sir
Christopher Frayling, an expert on the western, sees Kelly's young
school ma'am in this film as the archetypal "fair lady", in opposition
to the "dark lady" of the saloon bar, played in this case by Katy
Jurado. "Grace was the ultimate Wasp, remote and haughty and more New
England than wild west," he said.
Kelly gave up acting when she married the prince in April 1956,
becoming Monaco's princess consort in a church service watched by guests
including Cary Grant, Ava Gardner and David Niven, and wearing a
handsewn dress sent by MGM studios. The wedding was filmed and released
in cinemas in a deal that freed her from a seven-year contract, and the
couple sailed off on honeymoon on a yacht given to them by Aristotle
Onassis. Her transformation from film star to royalty was made complete
when Rainier banned her films in Monaco. The "wedding of the century"
was satirically recorded in
Punch, remembers French, with a
poetic pastiche of Hilaire Belloc written by Graham Greene that pointed
up the disconcerting involvement of Father Francis Tucker, her husband's
chaplain and moral adviser (played by Frank Langella in the new film),
which concludes:
Prince, you may draw your curtain closeAnd see your sentries on the stair,Then lie down by the bride you chose,But Father Tucker will be there.
Grace Patricia Kelly's story is far from a rags-to-riches fairytale. (That template better fits Rita Hayworth,
who started out dancing in a nightclub as Margarita Cansino and became
the wife of Prince Aly Khan.) She was the third child of a rich
Philadelphia brick magnate and enjoyed a privileged upbringing that
would go on to make her a natural for
The Philadelphia Story, a play she appeared in at drama school before later taking the lead role of Tracy Lord in the musical version,
High Society, her final Hollywood film, opposite Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby.
Crosby, who sang the hit song True Love with her in
High Society, has a place on her long list of great loves. Early on she had fallen for Gary Cooper, who handpicked her for stardom in
High Noon. She would have an affair with Clark Gable while filming
Mogambo,
leading her to quip: "What else is there to do if you're alone in a
tent in Africa with Clark Gable?" Later she told an interviewer that "if
there hadn't been so much of an age discrepancy things might have been
different".
Dishonourable mentions also reportedly go to married stars William
Holden, Ray Milland, David Niven, Oleg Cassini, the husband of Gene
Tierney, and even to Pierre Galante, Olivia de Havilland's husband and
the man who set up her first meeting with Rainier in Cannes. Niven did
nothing to dispel the image of Kelly as a sex enthusiast when he told
Michael Parkinson about the dicey moment when Rainier asked him over
dinner who had been his most exciting lover. Catching himself and
changing his answer as he spoke, Niven replied: "Grac-ie Fields".
Luckily, Rainier had never heard of the Lancashire singing star.
In 1954 Kelly won the lead role in the film of Clifford Odets's
The Country Girl
opposite Crosby and Holden. It was an unglamorous part as the neglected
wife of an alcoholic, but her degradations earned her an Oscar, beating
off Judy Garland, also nominated for
A Star is Born.
It is likely that the new Dahan film focuses on the least exciting
period of Kelly's life – a time when protocol overrode ambition. The
storyline charts the political pressure the French government put on
Rainier and Kelly's decision not to take the lead role in Hitchcock's
Marnie, leaving the way open for newcomer Tippi Hedren to star.
Last week Kidman said she understood why Kelly's three children had spoken out against the film.
"It's a child's job to protect their parent," she said. "In that
regard, I get it. I get why the children are upset." She added: "It's
not meant to be a biopic. I certainly did my best to honour everything
that was real and truthful in it."
Kidman said she felt Kelly had to play the part of a princess.
Adopting a new regal identity, she took up the charitable life,
promoting the Red Cross with a starry annual ball in Monaco and hosting
Christmas parties for local children. Yet she was always flanked by the
press, as is shown in a poignant picture of her arriving at the Cannes film festival
for a Hitchcock tribute two years before her death. "The freedom of the
press works in such a way that there is not much freedom from it," she
once said.
She died in a car accident on a dangerous coastal road in 1982,
suffering a stroke and losing control of the vehicle, which spun and
plunged down a 45ft drop. Younger daughter Princess Stéphanie was in the
car but survived with minor injuries. The funeral of her mother was
watched by 100 million people on television.
There is, of course, a fashion legacy, celebrated four years ago at the Victoria & Albert Museum in an exhibition, Grace Kelly: Style Icon. But more than the ubiquitous Hermès Kelly bags, and a "look" described by
Women's Wear Daily
in 1955 as "a fresh type of natural glamour", the actress's real
achievement may be the careful transition from screen goddess to staid
princess. She went convincingly from a co-star about whom Cary Grant
once said: "With all due respect to Ingrid Bergman, I much preferred
Grace. She had serenity," to an official and public Serene Highness.
• This article was amended on 16 May
2014. An earlier version said that Rita Hayworth became the wife of the
Aga Khan, rather than Prince Aly Khan.
