A classic example of actors being better than their material, “The Misfits” offers a slate of diverse talents who use the force of their respective energies and charismas to give magic to material that, quite frankly, is not very good.
Yes, I know that Arthur Miller wrote the screenplay, but it is a mess. Admittedly, he didn’t set out to write a mess, but the constant revisions made during the film’s difficult and often chaotic production obviously overwhelmed him, resulting in some of the most tin-eared dialogue and painfully obvious symbolism in a major motion picture.
Not that the basic concept was the greatest, with the recently divorced Roslyn (Marilyn Monroe, Miller’s then-wife) arriving in Reno for a quickie divorce and falling into a friendship with an aging cowboy (Clark Gable), a failed rodeo rider (Montgomery Clift) and an auto mechanic with too much emotional baggage (Eli Wallach).
Director John Huston was in a thankless position of trying to create cinematic alchemy by making a golden work from Miller’s leaden writing. The characters are often borderline caricatures who behave in a neurotic manner with endless talk about loneliness, failure and the need to be loved. The situations that befall them are painfully predictable – especially the climactic round-up of the wild horses, with Monroe’s excessively sensitive character going into hysterics by berating the men for wanting to sell the free and beautiful creatures to a slaughterhouse to be made into dog food. With lines like “Honey, nothing can live unless something dies” and “I just need to find another way to feel alive, that’s all,” the dialogue can generate groans or giggles depending on one’s tolerance for catchpenny profundity.
Yet Huston, as usual, creates a marvelous sense of environment thanks to the intelligent use of on-location shooting – in this case, a rugged, working-class Reno, captured in a documentary-style visual through Russell Metty’s fine camerawork and framed with Alex North’s unobtrusive score. The film looks right, even if the dialogue seems out of place for the setting.
Miller wrote “The Misfits” to give Monroe a dramatic role that she was not getting from Hollywood. It’s a good performance, but not a great one. She never truly lets go of the MM persona that defined her screen personality, which creates a constant distraction – especially in a badly conceived scene where she is posed next to glamorous publicity shots from earlier in career. Still, “The Misfits” showed she was capable of more than the fluffy light comedies that 20th Century Fox demanded of her. (There is comedy in “The Misfits” with Thelma Ritter and Estelle Winwood in supporting parts – too bad there wasn’t more of them on screen.)
In contrast, Gable shows an unexpected depth of dramatic power which gives the film its moorings – a big surprise considering that it felt like he was mostly phoning in his post-World War II performances. He is completely at ease in his role, showing a range of emotional versatility and an ability to submerge into a character completely unlike what audiences expected from him.
Montgomery Clift doesn’t have the same level of screen time as his co-stars, but he has one deeply moving monologue in a telephone call with his mother where he learns that he had been chiseled out of his inheritance. Of course, this was the last completed film for both Monroe and Gable and one of the last roles for Clift, which makes the film a rueful experience to behold.