These days I am feeling that I want to watch more movies featuring Kim Novak. Essentially I will say that after years it is now that I realize this great actress potential, not because I did not find her good before, but simply because for some reason when I was a teen I saw the movie Picnic and I did not like it. I found there a Kim Novak that seemed more like Marilyn Monroe style, as if she was just a bombshell and nothing else. Due to my young age perhaps I did not understand well the plot, so I felt kind of disappointed that an actress could become just an object, after all I had read about MM. Also, I remember she was considered the new Marilyn Monroe, just as Sharon Stone was named in magazines as the new Kim Novak. It is sad that an actress with great potential is just being manipulated by the studio and then the characters she plays become less and less interesting (especially to her) until she feels cheated and decides to leave the scene. With Kim Novak I have had a discovery since three or four years and every time I see her acting I feel how great actress she is. In Hitchcock's Vertigo, for example, it is not easy to show a cold nature that hides a passionate one, and that is what I saw in one of the great Hitch movies. The blond is perfect, I have to say better than others in the same style. He chose right. Then I saw her in this great movie too, Middle of the Night, opposing an aged Fredric March, and it was there that I said to myself "that is not just beauty, but feeling". She portrays a young girl who falls in love with an older man and all the goods and bads that come out in this relationship. Then The Man with the Golden Arm with Sinatra but I loved her so much in The Eddy Duchin story. She is memorable and adorable in this movie with the great handsome Tyrone Power. They both were so well in the movie, and then I remembered those magazines when I was a teen where Kim Novak stated that she was tired of Hollywood, that she had gone (if my memory is good now) into depression and that she was living far away in a farm with lots of animals, and happy life, in harmony with nature. I saw her with middle cut hair, smiling and still a shade of sadness in her eyes. I said to myself "it is so sad that actors and actresses have to accept terrible things while they are being at the same time great stars and we do not know anything about what they have to go through in order to stay in Hollywoodland." Recently, after all these years, i am discovering the great Kim Novak, and sure she has a lot of spirit and sensitiveness, not just an actress who would step on another one just to have a role. Through movies I don't see her that way, how she expresses her emotions as an actress lets see also what is behind this, which I find beautiful, for when it happens, it has to do with sensitiveness and I am certain she has a lot of it.
As time goes by and actresses (and actors too) who have been so famous because of their looks or that they left an imprint regarding fashion, style, etc, they tend to feel that the public should see the same face and they battle against time. I just feel that Kim Novak has more desires than to appear to the public "the same way she was", but one thing is for sure, she also has killed a few chains and has since years decided to live and work for what comes from art, like painting, or writing, or even making nice handcrafting. In some way she inspires me to do the same, as I now have a house to keep and to beautify. Kim Novak is not just an icon of beauty, but a great actress that left the scene because she was strong enough to do it when the time was right for her.
I miss some actors and actresses that left the scene and who did not play during their other years that come with maturity. Bette Davis appeared wrinkled playing great and less great movies but still she is a great actress that I cherish. But that is their decision, only we cannot enjoy these actors and actresses full potential, sadly.
My tribute to Kim Novak comes from nowhere and just because. Thanks for the movies and for your decisions, and for being honest to yourself. I don't even know if she wrote her biography, maybe she did, but if not, then live the present tense.
Middle of the Night, Kim Novak and Fredric March, 1959
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