The Misfits (1961)

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Version I saw: UK Bluray releaseActors: 7/10Plot/script: 8/10Photography/visual style: 7/10Music/score: 6/10Overall: 8/10Screen icons Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable made a film together. By the time it was released, Gable was dead, and Monroe died before completing her next film. If nothing else, that makes The Misfits a curiosity worth investigating.The screenplay is by famed playwright Arthur Miller, so it is unsurprisingly somewhat theatrical, and I can imagine much of the action taking place on a theatre stage. Famed director John Huston adds the cinematic touches, though, to make this very much a visual film.Miller was also married to Monroe, divorcing during the making of the film, and this is where the uncomfortable parallels begin, because Monroe's character Roslyn is herself a divorcée. However, as odd as it is, this must also be considered quite ahead of its time: divorce was much less common in those days, and fault still considered a key pillar in proceedings.Roslyn is shown to be divorced for a reason though. The Misfits revolves around three damaged personalities, in what is an unremittingly bleak work. Montgomery Clift (who also died young) is a thrill-seeking rodeo rider who is so tragically doomed that the repeated foreshadowing of his demise is almost funny. Gable is an old-fashioned cowboy, ill-at-ease with a world which is changing around him and rendering him obsolete. Again, fiction mirrors life here, for Gable's heyday was 20 years previously. However, whereas his character Gay (it stops being funny before too long) refuses to adapt, it seemed to me that Gable was making too much effort to retain his physique into his late 50s, probably contributing to the massive heart attack which ended his life not long after filming.The film itself shows some signs of its age. Attitudes towards drink and women are uncomfortably dated, and some of the treatment of animals required to film the climactic horse wrangling scenes would never be allowed today. On the other hand, some of the shots of Monroe, clearly intended to be very risqué, seem ridiculously tame to the modern eye.The main theme is one of disillusionment, an unwillingness to adapt to a changing world. It's uneasy watching, especially as it asks whether we are the same. Miller's deft handling of the pace and rising sense of doom is a testament to his genius as a playwright, as are the numerous great lines that pepper the dialogue. Monroe has an odd approach to the acting, but this contributes to a performance as strong as anyone's in a cast of very strong performances. Her manic breakdown at the very end, filmed in a long shot against the backdrop of barren desert, is grimly fascinating viewing.Despite the presence of two screen icons and a directing legend though, the one person who comes out of this excellent production with the most credit is Miller.

The last film of both Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable, this near-masterpiece offers a brilliant take on rebels who resist conformity. Written by Arthur Miller (whose marriage to Monroe was by then crumbling) the script is small in scope but large in insinuation. Monroe puts forth her most finely tuned acting performance, as does a closeted Montgomery Clift as the third wheel. Gable, too, helps hold the drama together with his arcing and resonant stylized portrayal of a leading man being pressured into submission. In the backdrop gallop a few dwindling relics of wild mustang, as metaphor of those who struggle to fight the cold mechanics of the establishment.

John Huston's "modern western" is one of his best...and one of the most historically important films. The last film appearances of Clark Gable & Marilyn Monroe have made this film legendary. Horse wrangler Gable gets much more than he bargained for when he and fellow cowpoke Eli Wallach befriend recent divorcée Monroe. She's an emotional wreck and so is Gable...and so is rodeo rider Montgomery Clift, who joins the group on a round up. A potent drama filmed in stark B&W and with an exceptional script by Arthur Miller. Monroe gives what is arguably her best performance (save BUS STOP) and Gable, twenty-plus years after GONE WITH THE WIND, still exudes charms that made him a screen icon. He's neither good guy nor bad. The supporting cast is exceptional. In addition to Wallach, there's Thelma Ritter, Estelle Winwood, and, briefly, Kevin McCarthy as Monroe's soon-to-be ex. Society doyenne Marietta Tree has a cameo as one of Gable's "conquests." Featuring one of composer Alex North's very best scores. A great movie.

John Huston's filming of Arthur Miller's THE MISFITS was dismissed at the time -- even by its doomed stars (well, "doomed" except for Eli Wallach, who is with us still at the grand old age of 137) but this poignant parable, set in the Nevada foothills, has aged as well as almost any film Marilyn ever did. And, in many ways, reflects most vividly what made her so distinct.Younger people sometimes ask about the nature of her appeal, what was so superlative about her?, was she overrated?, was she just another "it girl" for her day?, etc...In addition to being genuinely very pretty (most Hollywood "beauties" really are not) with an absolutely perfect feminine body (despite the occasional weight bump) Marilyn really did perfect the tormented, seemingly helpless blonde sex kitten persona better than anyone else, before or since, blending both the "nice girl" and "bad girl" archetypes of the mid-twentieth century.Also, she's one of the only ones who left behind a filmography of genuinely good pictures.But the era is also key to her appeal; they're inseparable... The idealized, picture perfect self-image America had during the sleepily optimistic new consumerism of the post-war, primary color-saturated 1950's when her career occurred, and the haunted end-of-an-world mood at the peak of the Cold War during the JFK years in the early-'60s when she died, mysteriously, in that cozy little bungalow in Brentwood.You either "get" that gauzy, wistful atmosphere or you don't. But it was immediately apparent even then, and it has everything to do with why Marilyn wasn't just one of the screen's greatest sex symbols (arguably, THE greatest) but an ideal icon and metaphor for a promising yet fascinatingly tragic period of American history that still intrigues and confounds.She just "fits" it perfectly.