Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell are sensational as blonde sexpot Loreli Lee and brunette bombshell Dorothy Shaw, two showgirls traveling to France aboard the Isle de Paris amid romantic scheming and legal intrigue. From the opening scene, Hawks pushes the possibilities of the medium with lurid Technicolor combinations that express the vibrant optimism and materialism of the early 1950s. Watch the way Monroe moves in the “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend” musical sequence—a fevered dream serving as a corrective to the factory repetition of Warhol’s now-ubiquitous silkscreen images. Russell’s poolside number is high camp, with Muscle Beach men in nude bathing suits performing calisthenics while she plaintively sings “Ain’t There Anyone Here for Love?” This is the film that made Monroe a star, but Hawks, like Howard Hughes, clearly relished photographing Russell’s dynamic body. Paris is a dingy stage set; the attraction here is the appearance of these perfected star bodies, which find a parallel in the flawless precision of the jewels Monroe desires. - Text courtesy of Harvard Film Archive