The Misfits (12A.)
Directed by John Huston. 1961.
Starring Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift, Eli Wallach and Thelma Ritter. Black and white. 120 mins
I think every movie fan has a favourite movie that they didn't really get the first time, but grew to love in subsequent viewings. Some though have films that they know are disappointing but keep watching in the hope that this time, this time, it will finally click with them. For me these would be films like Eyes Wide Shut, One From the Heart, the last two Matrix films; for a heap of people it must be The Misfits which is being wheeled out for re-release again because people still can't accept that that cast, that director and a script by that Arthur Miller turned out to be such a clunker.
Apart from the Phantom Menace, few film have failed to live up to their hype quite as completely as The Misfits, but then few films have generated a level of hype that is still building up expectations more than a half century after its release. Gable and Monroe's last film; the film that Monroe and Miller's marriage ended during; Clift at his most messed up; a production hampered by the bad behaviour of most of the cast, and its director who was off gambling most nights.
Events off screen would seem to have given the film a tragic air, but in truth most of that is written into Miller's script. Newly divorced and aimless in Reno, Roslyn (Monroe) hooks up with an aging cowboy called Gay (Gable) and his mates Guido (Wallach) and Percy (Clift.) and they drift around Reno and the desert not doing much of anything and gradually bring each other down.
The film wallows around in its despair. Monroe's Roslyn is a compulsive mood killer; dance with her and she'll mention that “We're all dying”; take her to a rodeo and she get all upset about cowboys getting hurt; bring her along when you're trying to round up some wild horses to sell 'em on as dog food and she'll start wailing about how cruel that is. There ain't no occasion she can't ruin, but the guys all put up with her because they think she is hot stuff. Which indeed she is, though it is noticeable that most ever time she is on screen someone seems to have carelessly smudged grease all over the camera lens.
Miller's script includes cruel little nods to the audience about the performers' lives. In her opening scenes Monroe is trying and failing to learn her lines; the words she will have to say in the divorce court. Later Clift is heard on the phone to his mother saying “my face is all healed up now, it's fine.”
Miller wrote it as a gift to his wife but it only served to show how completely wrong for her he was. It is a lament to the death of the American spirit, but it also demonstrates how completely wrong Miller was for writing a lament to the death of the American spirit. If anything it goes to show how the fifties intelligentsia were out of touch with their own country. Any movie tackling this subject would show it; it wouldn't have cowboys sit around and yakking about it. So perhaps it is appropriate that the only performer to really excel is Gable, the only one with no great reputation as an actor. All the methodist flounder around frantically trying to find the truth of their character; Gable just is his.
Directed by John Huston. 1961.
Starring Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift, Eli Wallach and Thelma Ritter. Black and white. 120 mins
I think every movie fan has a favourite movie that they didn't really get the first time, but grew to love in subsequent viewings. Some though have films that they know are disappointing but keep watching in the hope that this time, this time, it will finally click with them. For me these would be films like Eyes Wide Shut, One From the Heart, the last two Matrix films; for a heap of people it must be The Misfits which is being wheeled out for re-release again because people still can't accept that that cast, that director and a script by that Arthur Miller turned out to be such a clunker.
Apart from the Phantom Menace, few film have failed to live up to their hype quite as completely as The Misfits, but then few films have generated a level of hype that is still building up expectations more than a half century after its release. Gable and Monroe's last film; the film that Monroe and Miller's marriage ended during; Clift at his most messed up; a production hampered by the bad behaviour of most of the cast, and its director who was off gambling most nights.
Events off screen would seem to have given the film a tragic air, but in truth most of that is written into Miller's script. Newly divorced and aimless in Reno, Roslyn (Monroe) hooks up with an aging cowboy called Gay (Gable) and his mates Guido (Wallach) and Percy (Clift.) and they drift around Reno and the desert not doing much of anything and gradually bring each other down.
The film wallows around in its despair. Monroe's Roslyn is a compulsive mood killer; dance with her and she'll mention that “We're all dying”; take her to a rodeo and she get all upset about cowboys getting hurt; bring her along when you're trying to round up some wild horses to sell 'em on as dog food and she'll start wailing about how cruel that is. There ain't no occasion she can't ruin, but the guys all put up with her because they think she is hot stuff. Which indeed she is, though it is noticeable that most ever time she is on screen someone seems to have carelessly smudged grease all over the camera lens.
Miller's script includes cruel little nods to the audience about the performers' lives. In her opening scenes Monroe is trying and failing to learn her lines; the words she will have to say in the divorce court. Later Clift is heard on the phone to his mother saying “my face is all healed up now, it's fine.”
Miller wrote it as a gift to his wife but it only served to show how completely wrong for her he was. It is a lament to the death of the American spirit, but it also demonstrates how completely wrong Miller was for writing a lament to the death of the American spirit. If anything it goes to show how the fifties intelligentsia were out of touch with their own country. Any movie tackling this subject would show it; it wouldn't have cowboys sit around and yakking about it. So perhaps it is appropriate that the only performer to really excel is Gable, the only one with no great reputation as an actor. All the methodist flounder around frantically trying to find the truth of their character; Gable just is his.
