The Misfits

A few nights ago, instead of viewing any one of the movies in EW's Top Fifteen, I watched The Misfits. The film's reputation as one of Hollywood's most beautiful and strangely fascinating flops is well-founded--the picture, though remarkably compelling, just does not come off. Yet one is left with an unshakable notion that the film's power is inexplicably tied up in its status as failed art. Its place in movie history is also significant. The Misfits was the final film for two great legends of the screen: Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe. Based on a short story by Arthur Miller and directed by John Huston (The Maltese Falcon, Treasure of the Sierra Madre), the movie is dark, cerebral, and not a traditional Western. As Miller himself affirmed, "The preoccupation of the film is not what it usually [is] in a Western. It's about people trying to connect and afraid to connect."

With all of the talent and ambition engaged in the project, the film was expected to be a hit. The original trailer showcases the optimistic anticipation that proceeded its theatrical release:

For a time, The Misfits looked as though it would become the quintessential American epic.

The plot centers around a troubled former exotic dancer named Roslyn Taber and played by Monroe, who, after receiving a divorce, sets out into the Nevada desert with aging cowboy Gay Langland (Gable) and a widowed ex-air force pilot (Eli Wallach). Both men abhor "working for wages" and eventually team up with a rodeo man (Montgomery Clift) to capture a heard of wild mustangs and sell them as pet food for profit. Miller wrote the story while in Reno, obtaining a divorce from his first wife in order to marry Monroe, but by the time the film was in production their relationship was nearly over.

Monroe was eternally late to the set and frequently unprepared. Her prescription drug habit was interfering with the quality of her work. In addition, she was flagrantly carrying out an affair with French singer-actor Yves Montand. Miller was utterly emasculated. Legend has it that tired of waiting for Monroe to show up every day, Gable opted to do his own stunts--brutal exertion which may have contributed to the heart attack that killed him.

Thematically, the film not only deals with the increasing difficulty and ethical cost of maintaining a way of life outside of conventional society, but also questions the cowboy as a heroic ideal. In the first half of the film we find that Roslyn's landlady, Isabella Steers (Thelma Ritter), is exceptionally skeptical.

Isabella: He's a cowboy.

Gay: How'd you know?

Isabella: Ha. I can smell, can't I?

Gay: You can't smell cows on me.

Isabella: I can smell the look on your face, cowboy. But I love every miserable one of ya. Of course, you're all good for nothing...as you well know.

Because it is Clark Gable who portrays this fallen hero, a character now subject to this type of criticism, we not only watch a fictional man looking back on his fictional life and finding himself unsure of its merit, but something more significant. In The Misfits, an actor who once embodied rugged, free-spirited adventure to the American audience appears on screen old, out of step, yet still trying to regain his footing, and asks what it was worth. In this respect, Monroe's part is quite similar: Roslyn is a woman tormented to the point of madness by being valued all her life only for her beauty. That the ending is happy and that the two characters eventually drive off across the desert in a beat-up pick-up truck following the North Star makes little difference--the effect is haunting.