Starring: Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, Eli Wallach
Recently divorced Roslyn (Monroe) is on a night out at a restaurant
when her path crosses with an older charming cowboy named Gay Langland (Gable).
Instantly taken with Roslyn, Gay invites her to spend time out in the Nevada
wilderness with him. However, their stay is also alongside two friends of Gay’s;
Guido (Wallach) a widowed mechanic and Perce (Montgomery Clift) a
self-destructive rodeo rider and all three start vying for Rosalyn’s attention
whilst she struggles with their way of life.
Sometimes a film’s historical significance behind the scenes
can over-shadow the artistic reputation of what has been produced, such is the
case with John Huston’s occasionally perplexing pseudo-Western melodrama, The
Misfits, that has found notoriety for being the final film of two of the
brightest stars ever two shine in Hollywood; Clark Gable (who would suffer a
fatal heart attack just two days after filming) and Marilyn Monroe (who would
go on to work on George Cukor’s unfinished Something’s Got To Give before being
fired and dying a couple of months after her dismissal). As a final testament
to the two stars, it works interestingly. Gable, who will probably always be
remembered as the charming yet unreliable Rhett Butler in Gone With The Wind
(1939), still has the charm but his character is also an uncaring and selfish
individual with a pretty prominent dark streak. Monroe is still the blonde
bombshell that made her an icon and the plot of three men each wanting her is
not an unusual set-up for a Monroe movie, but here it’s darker and her
character is befitted with more intelligence and depth than the stereotypical
Marilyn Monroe part.
This could be attributed to screenwriter Arthur Miller. Primarily
famous for his plays such as The Crucible and Death Of A Salesman, Miller also
became a well-known figure as the unlikely third husband of Monroe, with jokes
being had about the bookish and nerdy Miller marrying a sex symbol like Monroe.
Nowadays, it’s well known that Marilyn was in fact far smarter and
well-informed than the parts she tended to play and it was probably Miller’s knowledge
of this that lead to a more rounded and interesting character than just the
beautiful blonde bimbo. The part of Rosalyn is most definitely tied to Monroe
portraying her and some of it works (a scene in which she’s ogled in a bar
plays much as a scene in one of her earlier films, but given a slightly
sinister edge) and some of it doesn’t such as when Eli Wallach spies a number
of iconic photos of Monroe which are never again referenced in the plot.
Neither Monroe or Gable look their best here. Being who they
are, they’re still attractive looking people but Gable’s age, Monroe’s drug
problems and their failing health in both cases make them seem more haggard.
Gable is wrinkled and sagging, Monroe is often washed-out and her looks are
starting to fade. It may not have been the intention of the film-makers but it
adds to the wearying and at times a-romantic nature of the film. Montgomery
Clift and Eli Wallach turn up in the supporting roles and whilst Clift’s
performance is rather inconsistent (he had his own demons and their toll on him
is pretty visible here), Eli Wallach provides some great moments, even if the
idea of the noticeably less photogenic actor who made his career often playing
rogues and bad guys makes for a slightly left-of-field casting choice. Thelma
Ritter plays Monroe’s older friend and confident and makes for a likable
performance early on in the film but quickly all but disappears once the main
plot points start to line up.
The central problem with The Misfits is that whilst it knows
it doesn’t want to be one of those light and breezy romantic comedies that made
Marilyn Monroe such a titan on the silver screen, and aside from a nugget of
the premise it avoids that like the plague, it doesn’t really seem to be struck
on what it wants to be; a deconstruction of the older Monroe image, a
revisionist twentieth-century Western that dispels cowboy heroism or even just
a really strange experience taking an audience to somewhere unusual. It tries
all three in turn, but never settles on one or in a neat balance. The Misfits
is a strange film, that owes less to the likes Some Like It Hot (1959) and more
to the unnerving civilised-person-far-from-civilised-society themes of the
recently-rediscovered and brilliant Wake In Fright (1971) meets Thomas Hardy’s
Far From The Madding Crowd. A strange beast of a film, not without being
troublingly uneven but also with occasional beauty and often something
interesting to offer.
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