THE MISFITS (1961)
Melodrama about a wonderful and beautiful divorced woman who meets some over-the-hill cowboys who fall for her. She brings beauty and meaning into the lives of those she meets, but those people are poisoned by desire to possess her. It becomes clear that there is no one that can bring her meaning the way she brings meaning to others.
After Monroe’s death, Arthur Miller wrote: “To have survived, she would have had to be either more cynical or even further from reality than she was. Instead, she was a poet on a street corner trying to recite to a crowd pulling at her clothes.” I think that quote best sums up the subject of this movie. Miller wrote the script as a vehicle for Monroe, giving her the one truly serious dramatic role of her career. She’s unbelievably moving in it. And it turned out to be her last movie. It’s one of the loneliest and saddest movies I can think of. Considering Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift are in it, it’s surprisingly unsexy. It’s a great movie about the worst qualities of men and the best qualities of women. I remember watching this filled with shame, relating so much to the mistakes the men were making, relating to their selfishness and blindness. It’s devastating. Also, I should warn you that there’s some intense brutality towards horses in this movie that may be too horrible for some. I don’t know if they harmed actual animals. They probably did. But the capturing of the wild horses works beautifully to illustrate how our desire to possess beauty destroys us as well as the beautiful things we long to possess.
