THE MISFITS (1961)
Directed by John Huston
Starring Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, Montgomery Clift, Eli Wallach,
Thelma Ritter
When I was in junior high, I went through an unlikely Clark Gable phase. In my seventh-grade English class, we had to read a biography and then do an oral report dressed as its subject, and I chose Clark Gable. I made a little mustache and stuck it on with spirit gum, had my dad tie a tie around my neck, and slicked back my hair. I was a very strange specimen of a West Texas girl. I watched most of his movies and had a poster of him in my room. I must say, he's still my idea of a man; certainly he'll always be my idea of a movie star. But while Clark Gable is in The Misfits, it's not his movie. It's Marilyn Monroe's all the way.
The Misfits is famous for having an unusually stellar, unusually doomed cast. Four of its big names (Monroe, Gable, Montgomery Clift, and Thelma Ritter) died within a few years of the movie's completion; it was both Gable's and Monroe's very last film. Directed by John Huston, it's a big story of loneliness, independence, love, lust, and a dying way of life, set against the Nevada desert. Monroe plays Roslyn, a woman who's come to Reno to get a divorce. After it's granted, she's not really sure what to do with herself, and she falls in with a group of lonesome cowboys. She seems like the type who's always falling into one situation or another, just drifting along. Gable plays Gay Langland, an aging man who wants nothing more than to be free; Clift is Perce, a young rodeo rider at war with his stepfather; and Wallach is Guido, a widower pilot who makes his living killing eagles and driving a wrecker. Thelma Ritter is Isabelle, Monroe's good sport of a landlady.
Arthur Miller wrote The Misfits for his wife, Marilyn, and it's easy to see that he must have loved her a lot. Roslyn is a part unlike any other she ever played, and she plays Roslyn beautifully. This is not a comedy in any way. Marilyn is called upon to be a scared, vulnerable, orphaned foal of a woman, with whom all the men fall in love. In fact, she's constantly beset upon by these men, forever tormented by this man or that telling her how wonderful she is, how loving, how alive, how trusting, and asking her to help him. It never ends--that's her life. I wonder if it's not similar to what Monroe's real life was. She's always seemed a vessel for men to put all their fantasies into, and that's her allure. Someone in the movie says something about how she looks like she was just born, like a kid, but she's a woman, and look at how she moves. There are numerous exploitative shots of her rear or her bosom, as though we have to be convinced that she's attractive. Her face is just sadness and openness. She's really brilliant in this movie.
The bad thing is that the production was a nightmare. Monroe had an overdose during filming, she was openly having an affair, she and Arthur Miller split up in the middle of the production, and she was impossible to work with, showing up hours late for shooting. John Huston didn't have the heart to get angry with her, and it seems to me that the rest of the cast must have resented her. For some reason, I just don't think she had much chemistry with any of the men. Some of them have been quoted on how fantastic she was to work with. Maybe the lack of chemistry is actually just part of her character, another facet of the blank slate that the men project their fears and dreams onto. Maybe that dictates the distance that I perceive. Her character seems helpless and hopeless, unable to do anything but accept what happens. When she first meets Gay, Clark Gable's character, he tries to kiss her and she says, "I don't feel that way about you, Gay." In the next scene, he's waking her up and cooking her breakfast; they clearly made love the night before. She's malleable and weak. What everyone loves about her is that she cares, and she does, but the fact that it seems so new and unusual to them makes me feel very bad about the bankrupt world in which they must reside. In a way, Isabelle, the older landlady, seems to have all the qualities the men keep praising Roslyn for--except, of course, her looks.
In the end, Roslyn does make a difference. The men take her mustanging with them. They plan to round up some of the few remaining wild horses in the mountains and sell them for dog food. They use an airplane, a truck, and tires attached to chains to catch the horses, instead of rounding them up on horses of their own, which I like as a further symbol of how empty and disconnected they are. This is how they make their money, saying "Anything's better than wages." Roslyn, who earlier threw a fit when Gay wanted to kill a rabbit that was eating his garden, can't stand for this. She runs out into the desert and screams at the men that they're all dead, that they're all liars, and that she pities them. She's then seen back in the truck, but it turns out she's made them reconsider what they're doing. But I think she's still just drifting along, and she drifts back into Gay's arms. I guess the ending can be interpreted in a number of different ways, but for me, it's very bittersweet. They're still all alone, even if Roslyn starts talking about having a baby, and the only thing that lies ahead is more loneliness and more wages.
PBS showed a documentary on the making of The Misfits on October 2. I tried to tape it but the schedule was wrong and I ended up with Willie Nelson instead. I'd really love to see it, and if anyone out there has a copy, please e-mail me.
Jennifer Rae Atkins
October 4, 2002