On Wednesday, July 4, 2007 at 6:17:53 AM UTC-10, FRAJM wrote:
In 1961 my father and I went to see a new film starring his two favorite movie stars in all the world, Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe. After 20 minutes, he said let's get out of here and for the last 45+ years that's
all I've ever seen of _The Misfits_. Why did he walk on it? Because
Monroe spends the movie in blue jeans and pigtails and he only wanted to
see her glammed up as in _Gentlemen Prefer Blondes_ or his favorite film
of all time, _Some Like It Hot_. As for Gable, he was looking old and
playing someone who was at the core the saddest man in the world. It was
just too much of a shock for the old man.
Finally, I've gotten around to watching the DVD release of _The Misfits_
and I could not be sorrier that my poor father couldn't have stayed with
it to the end. It is a film of great beauty -- the performances, the direction (John Huston), the photography (Russell Metty), the music
(Alex North), the editing (George Tomasini) -- and a theme that
resonates with anyone who knows he or she is going to die.
Monroe plays Roslyn, in Reno to divorce Kevin McCarthy. She has already
been befriended by Thelma Ritter, who lights up the scenes she's in as
usual. Roslyn soon becomes involved with three men, Gay (Gable) the
aging cowboy, Guido aka Pilot (Eli Wallach) ex-WW II bomber, and Perce (Montgomery Clift). She moves into Guido's unfinished house out in the
desert but is living, chastely it seems, with Gay. They fix up the
house, plant a garden, have their first fight over whether Gay should
shoot the rabbits who are eating their lettuce.
At a rodeo, they pick up Perce, bumming around on the minor rodeo
circuit, picking up $100 here, a concussion there, and generally feeling alienated since his mother remarried and his stepfather got his late
father's ranch. Roslyn hates the rodeo, hates the cruelty to the animals
and to the men.
Eventually, the four of them go off to wrangle a herd of mustangs, wild horses. It's only when they get far out in the desert that Roslyn finds
what is going to happen to the horses once they're captured, viz, sold
to the knacker for pet food. She raises holy hell with the men who are willing to kill wild, free creatures just so they can avoid working for wages. Just the thought of the distant shot of her raging against the
cruelty and hypocrisy of men, stomping and twisting in furious agony,
brings a catch to my throat.
The long sequence that constitutes about the last third of the film
concerns the capture and ultimate fate of those mustangs and the effect
it has on the four humans. The scenes of roping the herd stallion are thrilling and exciting, but you've got to be rooting for the doomed
horse that fights and fights until it is too exhausted to fight any
longer. It is possible that the vigorous work-out Gable got during these scenes, especially when he was being dragged by the stallion,
contributed to the fatal heart attack he suffered shortly after shooting
was finished.
Arthur Miller wrote the script for his then-wife and overall it is a
superb script. My only reservation about the film is the Roslyn is a
little too wise and has amazing insights and ways of expressing herself
that at times sound more theatrical than cinematic. For example, Perce
asks her "who do you depend on?" She replies: "I don't know. Maybe all
there really is is just the next thing. The next thing that happens.
Maybe you're not supposed to remember anybody's promises."
In any case, Monroe proved once again that she was a real actress. She
might have been hell to work with, but what finally got on the screen
has to have had it all worth while. Her disappointment with life, her sadness, and her pure faith in the power and goodness of life shines
through her in every scene.
Meanwhile, Gable had as good a role here as he ever got in his career;
his Gay is complex, layered, sad, guarded, proud, lonely, nearly broken
by the loss of everything he valued including family and wilderness and freedom.
The other principal actors, Clift and Wallach, are likewise superb, each trying in his own way to use Roslyn to lift himself out of the hole he
finds himself in. Their performances are utterly convincing and deeply moving.
This is a film I will watch many times in the future and I know for a certainty that it is one of those films that I am going to find new
treasures in each time.
--
Frank in Seattle
____
Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney
"Millennium hand and shrimp."
(Recent Youtube upload):
The Making of Marilyn Monroe's Very Meta Last Film
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