The Misfits

Man, if you don't know what to watch some night and you want to see a real slice of cinematic history, watch The Misfits.

This is one of those movies that I haven't seen since the late show maybe 30 years ago. It holds up extremely well after 46 years. I just can't recommend it enough.

Although not nearly as shockingly cerebral now as it must have seemed to audiences in 1961, The Misfits is still quite a bizarre movie. Directed by John Huston, written by Arthur Miller as a serious acting vehicle for his then-wife, Marilyn Monroe, the black-and-white film is centered around a quartet of social misfits in lonely and expansive Nevada. Monroe portrays Roslyn Taber, a newly divorced woman who becomes romantically involved with a cowboy named Gay Langland (Clark Gable). But while she is as glamorous as ever, Monroe plays Roslyn as fragile and hardly less tormented than the actress must have been herself at the time. While not a surprise, if anyone knew her intimately, it was Miller, The Misfits shows off Monroe's range like no previous role.

But despite wonderful performances by Gable, Monroe, Montgomery Clift, Eli Wallach, and the invincible Thelma Ritter, the final product has always been overshadowed by the baggage of its stars. It was both Monroe's and Gable's final film. Though she survived an overdose during the course of shooting and was able to finish the movie, as the world knows, one year later Monroe succeeded in committing suicide. Gable, seemingly spry at 59, died soon after the film was completed of a fatal heart attack, blamed on his own insistence on performing all the dangerous horse stunts himself.

The story is less an entertaining western than a cerebral exploration of what happens when a group of discontents fall in love with the same insecure woman. Monroe's acting is superb. Huston transforms her stunning looks into something less sexy than vulnerable, and her characterization of Roslyn is full of haunting depth and subtlety.