The Misfits
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Movie Reviews of The Misfits
Movie Review: a writers eye
Summary: 5 Stars
I had to chime in here. The MISFITS is a Must Have movie for any Marilyn Monroe fan. It was written by her then husband and GREAT playwright Arthur Miller. In it you can see so many sides of the real Marilyn. It was tough for marilyn to get through this film and sad that at the end she had to face that Miller was having an affair with a makeup girl. Divorce followed, but the film does show that in many ways Miller DID love Marilyn.
This film will break your heart, lift your heart, and cause you to really wonder about life. It will show you many different types of love. Love for a friend, for a lover, for a crush, for a person, for an image.. love for the beauty of a woman in a bar, love for the beauty of a man on a rodeo horse.. and even love for a war hero who turns out to have a terrible view on life and love even though he himself in his heart is beautiful.
Clark Gable was wonderful all through it. And its strange as well that the last lines of the film are spoken by Monroe and Gable to each-other, while just a little while after they both left this world and passed away. This was the last movie for Marilyn Monroe and the last for Clark Gable as well.
Marilyn as a girl used to carry a photo of Gable in her purse as a girl and teen because she had seen a photo of her father once and he looked like him to her. This was from what she says in her book "My Story" an unfinished book. I find it touching that the last film she stars in just so happens to include Gable and her together trying to understand each-other in a very upside-down world where you have to choose between love, money, shoulds, and everything else. A comparison might be rebel without a cause in terms of the emotions and mixed up feelings everyone has in this film.
Everyone has their story and their personality. We all make our choices.
Finding people who can fit into your life in a healthy way is the key.. but where are they? Who do we choose? That is the main story of The Misfits.. each character is a misfit or someone that stands out or hardly belongs with the masses in some way shape or form.. so now, what do they do with eachother?
Its an AMAZING movie.
One that always brings me tears.
Movie Review: A Grand Exit
Summary: 5 Stars
"The Misfits" was an unusual film for 1961. It has an all-star cast, an all-star director and a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer. It would be rather arrogant to suggest that the movie was ahead of its' time but its' hard to escape that feeling. I saw it as a young man many years ago and, frankly, I couldn't appreciate it then. I saw it recently and was impressed by what I saw. This is a brilliantly written, acted, and directed movie about individualists in a world oriented towards conformity.
There are a number of great scenes in the movie including one in which Marilyn Monroe is playing the child's game of paddle ball in a bar. It's a cinema classic. The scene where Clark Gable and company capture and supposedly break a wild mustang is the allegory of the whole movie. Untameable individuals seek to break untameable horses. It was a real Donnybrook (and supposedly hastened Gable's early death) with an exhausted Gable seemingly the victor. Marilyn Monroe perhaps saw the irony of the situation (or else reacted over femininely to an overly masculine act) and counter-reacts to the situation. The zenith is followed by the nadir and we are left with the idea that more than one stallion has been broken.
This was the last movie for Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe (and, I think, for Montgomery Clift as well). People are still mourning the passing of MM but it is Gable that I think of when I think of "The Misfits". Anyone who views any combination of Post WWII Gable movies has to realize that the man was a star in name only. You can blame a lot on the Studio control of what movies he was to star in. However, his acting was largely uninspired. His romantic scenes were robotic and he seemed to wear a constant scowl. His last hurrah was "The Misfits" and he certainly made the most of it. His exuberance, so long missing in action, was back with a vengeance. What his career might have looked like with more misfits like this is tempting to contemplate. Better, though, to just say, "What a way to go!"
Movie Review: A Film That Ages Well
Summary: 5 Stars
Released in 1961 and filmed in beautiful black and white, THE MISFITS is one of those rare films that get better with age. It has everything going for it. Directed by the great John Houston from a screenplay by one of America's greatest playwrights Arthur Miller,the film starred Marilyn Monroe as the just divorced Roslyn Taber, Clark Gable as Gay Langland, along with Montgomery Clift as an over-the-hill rodeo rider, Eli Wallach as a mechanic and Thelma Ritter as Rosyln's friend.
Each of these characters in his or her own way is a misfit. They all are pretty much asea even though they are in the Nevada desert. The males all are in love with Roslyn, a fragile creature who cannot stand to see anything or anyone hurt. Her attitude is pitted against the cowboys' who hunt wild mustangs that eventually will be killed. The men value their independence and fear the worst thing that can happen to them, becoming paid by the hour and doing something like pumping gas. The film is beautifully shot, and the stunts with the horses are tense and breathtaking. Monroe and Gable give stunning performances. Ms. Monroe really could act if given a chance and demonstrates it here. I had always thought of Gable as a one trick pony(Rhett Butler) but he is quite wonderful here as the aging cowboy.
What was going on off the set rivals the movie. Monroe's showing up late or not at all for a shoot was legendary; Clift was on a downward spiral because of substance abuse; Miller would divorce Monroe soon after the movie was finished. Gable had a heart attack days after finishing the movie and died. This was Monroe's last completed film as well. There are too many ironies here to unravel. Wallach early in the film tells Roslyn that she has "the gift of life." Surely no one would describe Monroe in real life in those terms. She apparently had a crush on Gable for years and convinced herself that he was her father.
THE MISFITS fits very well as a fine film.
Movie Review: Haunted Marilyn
Summary: 5 Stars
John Huston's filming of Arthur Miller's THE MISFITS was dismissed at the time -- even by its doomed stars (well, "doomed" except for Eli Wallach, who is with us still at the grand old age of 137) but this poignant parable, set in the Nevada foothills, has aged as well as almost any film Marilyn ever did. And, in many ways, reflects most vividly what made her so distinct.
Younger people sometimes ask about the nature of her appeal, what was so superlative about her?, was she overrated?, was she just another "it girl" for her day?, etc...
In addition to being genuinely very pretty (most Hollywood "beauties" really are not) with an absolutely perfect feminine body (despite the occasional weight bump) Marilyn really did perfect the tormented, seemingly helpless blonde sex kitten persona better than anyone else, before or since, blending both the "nice girl" and "bad girl" archetypes of the mid-twentieth century.
Also, she's one of the only ones who left behind a filmography of genuinely good pictures.
But the era is also key to her appeal; they're inseparable... The idealized, picture perfect self-image America had during the sleepily optimistic new consumerism of the post-war, primary color-saturated 1950's when her career occurred, and the haunted end-of-an-world mood at the peak of the Cold War during the JFK years in the early-'60s when she died, mysteriously, in that cozy little bungalow in Brentwood.
You either "get" that gauzy, wistful atmosphere or you don't. But it was immediately apparent even then, and it has everything to do with why Marilyn wasn't just one of the screen's greatest sex symbols (arguably, THE greatest) but an ideal icon and metaphor for an immensely promising yet fascinatingly tragic period of American history that still intrigues and confounds. She just "fits" it perfectly.
Movie Review: CATCHING UP WITH A CLASSIC
Summary: 5 Stars
Clark Gable felt that this was one of his best films; it was. Marilyn Monroe was indeed a great actress; this film proves it. John Huston was one of the finest directors in history; this film is a part of that legacy. It was very much 'ahead of it's time', so several critics didn't understand it. Gable's unexpected death also played a part in what became very mixed reviews in 1961. But time has a way of 'catching up' with things, and today, "The Misfits" is regarded as a genuine Classic.
I remember seeing it in the mid-'70's at the Harvard Square Theater in Cambridge MA. The theater was jam-packed, and the mostly college-age-audience broke into the film several times with appplause; most notably at the scene where Monroe screamingly denounces the men as "Liars! All of you, liars...". At the end of the film, there was a second of almost-stunned silence, before the place exploded into thunderous cheers and applause. The film was shown several times while I lived in the area (I always brought friends to see it), and the reaction was nearly always the same, as time was beginning to catch up with "The Misfits"...and the legend continued to grow...
Mention should also be made of the great Montgomery Clift, brilliant in one of his finest portrayals; Eli Wallach, eerily intense as Guido, and the always-wonderful Thelma Ritter. They're all magnificent.
Even today, as new friends come into my life, they always get a DVD copy of "The Misfits" (though many already know & love it) for Christmas or birthday, and the reactions are usually "Gable was fantastic!" or "Marilyn really WAS a great actress!"
Thanks to the miracle of home-video & DVD, time has finally caught up with the brilliance of "The Misfits". It's time everyone did.