Rent The Misfits (1961)

“Horse killers!” - The Misfits review by LJ

Four childish alcoholics beat up some horses, I don’t know what I was supposed to get out of this ‘contemporary western’.

The Final Finished Film of both Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe is interesting, but meandering - The Misfits review by PV

I have to be honest, I really didn't get it. The film has a meandering plot. Arthur Miller adapted his own short story into the screenplay which is maybe why there is so much padding and flab. It's a short story stretched out to 2 hours.

I felt I had to watch it, as it's Clark Gable's last film I think - he died of a heart attack aged 59 in November 1960. And Marilyn Monroe's last completed film too. She died the next year. Maybe that is why it's talked of so much? The screenwriter Arthur Miller was married for Monroe at the time, and she got Eli Wallach the pilot role apparently - that actor lived to age 98!

The gay Montgomery Clift who was in a relationship with Roddy McDowall - he died in 1966 age 45, and was another big boozer like Clark Gable.

My notes say: "It was a commercial failure, but received critical acclaim for its script and performances. Its reputation has enhanced over the years, and many critics now consider it to be a masterpiece and one of the best films of the 1960s."

To be honest, if you want to watch the mastery of Marilyn Monroe at her best, watch SOME LIKE IT HOT. Not this. Clark Gable was always a cowboy/lumberjack with manners in romantic roles; Clift cast as a hunk with hypnotic eyes a lot.

But NOT BAD, just meandering, interesting more than entertaining. It actually surprised me with the horse stuff at the end, some great shots of the landscape and horses (which believe it or not are not native to the Americas, all there got there with Europeans post 1492).

3 stars

Monroe Emotes. - The Misfits review by Steve

This contemporary western breaks into two contrasting halves. There's a static first hour heavy with Arthur Miller's dialogue which is neither realistic nor poetic. Then director John Huston wakes up for the later action scenes of macho horse wrangling, with the thematic content stowed away in the subtext. And this is really very good.

The lead role of the hyper-emotional ex-showgirl who gets tangled up with some vagabond cowboys was clearly written for Marilyn Monroe. But she hasn't the necessary gravitas. Problems in her personal life also led to her being photographed (by the great Russell Metty) in such extreme soft focus that she is sometimes oddly blurred.

Clark Gable is plainly too ill to play her rugged, virile lover. Montgomery Clift brings a welcome surge of maverick volatility but in an insubstantial role. This isn't Alex North's most memorable score, though the Nevada desert in b&w is a big bonus. There are so many prestigious names involved, except some were in decline. Including the director.

And then there's the pathos soon to overtake Monroe, Gable and others. So it's a sort of farewell to them, as well as the old west. This has been served as evidence that Marilyn was a great dramatic actor- or unprofessional, depending on the agenda. So there is poignancy and debate, as well as a barnstorming second act.