THEMISFITS
DIRECTED BY: JOHN HUSTON - WRITTEN BY: ARTHUR MILLER, FRANK E. TAYLOR
STARRING: MARILYN MONROE, CLARK GABLE, MONTGOMERY CLIFT, ELI WALLACE, THELMA RITTER, KEVIN MCCARTHY
RELEASED: 1961

A film more famous for it's historical attributes than it's story, which is a retread of I956's Bus Stop. A rule of thumb in the picture game says the best movies are those in which the writers, director, actors and others connected with the production are all on the same page. Films as different as Triumph of the Will and The Blues Brothers give testament to the rough truth of that rule, and certainly that's part of the magic of The Misfits. How many films have the husband writing the story in homage to a star/wife as the marriage dissolves and featuring misfits called actors and cowboys and mustangs. Every major role is roughly biographical for the actor playing it. A film set is like a medieval court; full of poison apples and professional jealousies; John Huston was one of the few directors of that era who could stand-up to the anxieties and insecurities that must have been rampant.

Throughout the film, Marilyn Monroe's dialogue is a custom fit to her personality at its best, the closest to a real Marilyn we'll ever see on film. In Arthur Miller's play, After the Fall, based on his marriage with Marilyn; a wrenching psycho-drama is shown in close-up. The Misfits was her last film, the only serious film she was allowed to do as something more than a sex bomb. She had her troubles; the production had to wrap and begin again later because of them; but it was worth the wait. We see a different Marilyn than we ever saw before; an adult who has feelings and interacts with other adults instead of the usual sex farce. And although the film can wander off in vague directions, it's a genuine pleasure to see her and Gable work together.

She's photographed and shown as if there's a radiance around her; as if she were a saint, and all the rough men are thinking, between helpless lusts, that they are graced by this creature who has fallen to their sagebrush-covered part of the earth. The men represent her male audience, "prisoners of sex" in Norman Mailer's phrase, each with his own special male take on the situation. And since they're all a species of cowboy, they're the quintessential American male admirers. Clark Gable was the leading man's leading man, but hadn't been in a decent film since Gone with the Wind in 1939. But he wasn't called "The King" for nothing; without his presence the film would be rudderless. He looks very good in the film, but he insisted on doing his own stunts - and he was dead eleven days after the film wrapped.

His pal Guido, played by Eli Wallach, is shown to be a boorish misfit, and the only one whom Roslyn (Marilyn) takes a dislike to; he's a snake in the grass. And by now, even the average American knew that Monty Cliff's steep rise and flame-out was at least partly of the misfit variety. It was four years after his auto accident, so his rodeo injuries and his dysfunctional family (laid out in a great monologue-phonecall) put him in misfit country. They're all walking ghosts. The two superstars are making their last film. Monty's career was almost dead and he'd be dead in six years. The Misfits was playing on television in his apartment the night he died.

Each actor plays themselves, their stories, their work, and their lives. And each represents something out there; the gods of the earth, sky or mud. But it's the end and the summation that is truly incredible, and where playwright Arthur Miller comes into his own - or was it Marilyn who gave him the idea? It's about the land and the animals, and how in the last 400 years America has raped and pillaged the land and it's species from one coast to the other until only some dry desert places in the outback of Nevada harbors some few wild things. And the men come to make a few dollars and have some sport by catching them for slaughter as dogfood; until the most wounded misfit of them all, Marilyn, on that deserted dry lakebed of a stage, in a wide shot of earth and sky, calls down the furies to damn them for not seeing what has become of everything. Their approach to the land is the same as their approach to her. It may be admiring, but in the end it's selfish. The men stand there in the hot sun, blinking and scratching their heads, until one of them actually gets her point. Would that life could imitate art. (see link below to view the scene on Youtube)

The Misfits, which is as uneven as the land and people it documents, is a great film, especially for script and Gable's performance. The film moves from the specific to the general, until the last is played out on the vast stage of the desert flats with no place to hide. If we could just be sure we're moving forwards and not backwards in this great experiment in man's domination over the earth, and thereby paradoxically over himself. But just for a moment some light was caught on film, and a hopeful story was told. It's the misfits of the world that do a new thing and achieve the different take; the smug and the self-satisfied are the also-rans of life.

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scenes from the film: Desert scene in The Misfits --- The Misfits trailer
Divorce scene - Misfits

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Notes:

(a) John Huston was by then well versed in the politics of a film set. Reportedly, at the start of production on The Night of the Iguana (I964), he presented each of his stars with a present - a handgun. No report on how well the joke went over.
(b) Somewhat surprisingly, Clark Gable treated Monroe and the similarly distraught, alcoholic Clift with great consideration and kindness during the shoot. He got on less well with Wallach, though, regularly referring to the "boiled ham" he planned to have for lunch, while the studious, showy Method actor would retort, "Hey, king, can you lower my taxes?"