Kim Novak is to receive the Venice Film Festival’s (August 27 – September 6) Golden Lion for lifetime achievement.
The festival will also screen the world premiere of documentary Kim Novak’s Vertigo by Alexandre Philippe, made in collaboration with the legendary American actress.
Known for movies including Vertigo, Picnic, and Bell Book and Candle, Novak said today: “I am deeply, deeply touched to receive the prestigious Golden Lion Award from such an enormously respected film festival. To be recognized for my body of work at this time in my life is a dream come true. I will treasure every moment I spend in Venice. It will fill my heart with joy.”
Venice’s Artistic Director Alberto Barbera declared: “Inadvertently becoming a screen legend, Kim Novak was one of the most beloved icons of an entire era of Hollywood films, from her auspicious debut during the mid-1950s until her premature and voluntary exile from the gilded cage of Los Angeles a short while later. She never refrained from criticizing the studio system, choosing her roles, who she let into her private life and even her name. Forced to renounce her given name, Marilyn Pauline, because it was associated with Monroe, she fought to conserve her last name, agreeing, in exchange, to dye her hair that shade of platinum blonde which set her apart. Independent and nonconformist, she created her own production company and went on strike to renegotiate a salary that was much lower than that of her male co-stars.”
He continued: “Thanks to her exuberant beauty; her ability to bring to life characters who were naïve and discreet, as well as sensuous and tormented; and her seductive and sometimes sorrowful gaze, she was appreciated by some of the major American directors of the period, from Billy Wilder (Kiss me, Stupid), to Otto Preminger (The Man With the Golden Arm), Robert Aldrich (The Legend of Lylah Clare), George Sidney (The Eddy Duchin Story, Jeanne Eagels, Pal Joey), and Richard Quine, with whom she made unforgettable romantic comedies (Pushover, Bell Book and Candle, Strangers When We Meet, The Notorious Landlady). But her image will remain forever linked to the dual characters she played in Hitchcock’s Vertigo, which became the role of her life. This Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement celebrates a star who was emancipated, a rebel at the heart of Hollywood who illuminated the dreams of movie lovers before retiring to her ranch in Oregon to dedicate herself to painting and to her horses.”
A major star in the 1950s, Novak withdrew from acting by 1966 and has only worked sporadically in films since. She appeared in The Mirror Crack’d in 1980 and had a regular role on the primetime series Falcon Crest (1986–1987). After making film Liebenstraum in 1991 she retired from acting.
The festival will also fete revered German filmmaker Werner Herzog.
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