The Misfits - written by Arthur Miller, directed by John Huston (1961)
“The Misfits is a 1961 American drama western film written by Arthur Miller, directed by John Huston, and starring Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, and Montgomery Clift. The supporting cast features Thelma Ritter, Eli Wallach and Kevin McCarthy. The Misfits was the last completed film for both Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe. For Gable, the film was posthumously released, while Monroe died in 1962. The plot centers on a newly divorced woman (Marilyn Monroe) and her time in Reno and Northern Nevada, spent with her friendly landlady Isabelle Steers (Thelma Ritter), an old school cowboy (Clark Gable), the cowboy's tow truck-driving and plane-flying friend (Eli Wallach) and their rodeo-riding, bronc-busting friend (Montgomery Clift) in Dayton, Nevada, and in the western Nevada desert in 1960. ... The making of The Misfits was troublesome on several accounts, not the least of which was the sometimes 100 °F (38 °C) heat of the northern Nevada desert and the breakdown of Monroe's marriage to writer Arthur Miller. Miller revised the script throughout the shoot as the concepts of the film developed. Meanwhile, while her marriage to Arthur Miller had issues, Marilyn Monroe was drinking too much after work, and was using prescription drugs; according to Huston in a 1981 retrospective interview, he was ‘absolutely certain that she was doomed’ a conclusion he reached while working on the film. ... Huston shut down production in August 1960 when Monroe went to a hospital for relaxation and depression treatment. ...”
“John Huston’s The Misfits is a studious, daring vision of American life depicting the same type of protagonists that always appealed to the great filmmaker—people who could be easily called losers, but whose streak of idealism and hopefulness, in the midst of their isolating displacement, makes them attractive and quite easily relatable for the audience. The status of this 1961 drama gained an additional burst by the fact that it was the last film Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe ever worked on, but its value hardly lies in trivialities like this. The main strengths of Huston’s celebrated film can be found in superb acting by Monroe, Gable, Montgomery Clift and Thelma Ritter, as well as Arthur Miller’s genuinely inspired script and director of photography Russell Metty’s astonishing black-and-white visuals. In its production phase, the film basically had to go through hell. ...” John Huston’s ‘The Misfits’ stands tall as a pearl of the sixties which isn’t going to fade into public oblivion any time soon (Video)
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