Director: John Huston
Year Released: 1961
Rating: 2.5
Known mostly as a failure, and the last picture Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe did, so there's naturally some sort of spooky allure to it. The Misfits is a strange picture - there's no doubt about it - which is thematically muddled and obnoxiously artsy (no offense to Huston, but he's weakest when he's trying to work with non-hard-boiled scripts). Playwright Arthur Miller wrote it as a valentine, I think, to his love Monroe, and it certainly takes advantage of Monroe's strength as a lusty, busty sex object (whose bottom playfully and sexually throbs against a horse's saddle, much to Gable's wizened yet lustful delight), and also consciously utilizes her mental hysteria and swooning demeanor to max potential (I don't think she's acting - that's her). In terms of meaning it's unbearably weak, with Miller piling on lame metaphor after lame metaphor until the movie collapses; in the extremely bizarre (yet stunningly shot) third act Gable uses brute force to tame nature, Monroe screeches and hollers against an equally gorgeous (but in a different way) range of mountains and Gable sees how senseless and futile and unfair it is to destroy nature's spirit to save one's own, coming to his senses, dropping the foolish guise of "cowboy-dom" and drives toward normality with the woman who tames him (naturally this is only a half-hearted interpretation). There's little plot to guide you through and no concrete singular message to be conveyed; Miller must think his material works best when muddled and unfocused. It remains "watchable" due to the wonderful cast, but it's also eerily depressing. It predates McCabe & Mrs. Miller as a bona-fide anti-Western.
