The Misfits review โ Marilyn Monroe is fascinatingly sad in John Hustonโs desolate western
The bleak Arthur Miller-written 1961 American pastoral is rereleased to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Monroe, who plays a naive divorcee who meets three new suitors in her most serious and poignant role The 100th anniversary of Marilyn Monroeโs birth, and a two-month retrospective at BFI Southbank, is the occasion for the rerelease of her most serious and poignant film, John Hustonโs western drama and American pastoral from 1961. The filmโs end of an era desolation feels more sombre than ever; the last film for both Clark Gable and Monroe and a melancholy late role for Montgomery Clift. The Misfits was written for the screen by Monroeโs then husband, Arthur Miller, adapted from his own short story from a few years before. Millerโs opaque motivations are a subtext running under this movie; with a strangely uxorious dedication or vengefulness, Miller conceived the whole thing for Marilyn. It is the story of a passionate, vulnerable, childlike free spirit who finds a complex kind of excitement and freedom โ flavoured with disillusion โ with a real man after divorcing an emotionally blank city dweller. (Monroe and Miller divorced immediately after production.) The key irony of the title is that of course no one on screen is a misfit: they fit in all too well with the stark landscape and each other in their loneliness, their discontent and their yearning for something else or something more to live for. Continue reading...