Fitting

Its production problems, the incongruent personalities involved, and tragic ends of its stars appropriately receive much of the attention in appraisals of "The Misfits," but it also risks belying how well put together here are even the nominally antagonistic elements. A screenplay written by a playwright, Arthur Miller, and it shows in dialogue that verges on the grandiose, as with a bit of the "it's better than wages" talk from a man who was investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Written as a present to his then-wife and star Marilyn Monroe that ended up presaging their divorce and the marriage to his next wife, Inge Morath, one of the Magnum photographers who captured the production in a much commented upon deglamorized way relative to traditional Hollywood publicity (and wrote about it, too--see works cited). As based on his short story that memorialized his first divorce in preparation for marrying Monroe. When, of course, he wrote a thinly-disguised version of the film's production, "Finishing the Picture," his last play, he and his characters couldn't finish the shoot, couldn't figure out the Monroe enigma.

By contrast, directed by John Huston, renowned for his economical filmmaking approach, if not for his uneconomical all-night gambling and drinking benders. If anything it's surprising that Miller in interviews has stated how well he got along with Huston and despite his work being rooted in the word and Huston's in the image and their consequent disagreement on whether the camera should focus on the star actors or the Nevada scenery. Of course, you need to get close with such a star-studded cast, and cinematographer Russell Metty's camera does so with some nice mirror reflection shots and what Miller's last play summarized as its fictionalized cinematographer's dictum, "Get close so you see the faces, get low so you get the ass." So when the camera does move back to take in the "Moon"-scape of the Nevada desert, as with Monroe's climactic screaming, the punctuation of it is enhanced, the isolation of chasing down the last of the mustangs all the more affecting. And what great casting. This was tailor made for Monroe, so much so I suspect her input mattered a great deal, but it seems as though it were made for the others, too.

Although some seem to neglect her effective dramatic turn in "Bus Stop" (1956) and the less so role in "River of No Return" (1954), also both Westerns, "The Misfits" is admittedly a more relentlessly dramatic turn than Monroe had approached before. It's as if her apprehension therefrom were written into the film, opening with her preparing in front of the mirror, reciting and flubbing lines she finds unconvincing for her divorce hearing, unable or unwilling to get into character, Thelma Ritter by her side in place of acting coach Paula Strasberg. When the men come calling, she'll reverse this introspection in favor of performing and criticizing the sexpot muse expected of her.

The model of pin-up snapshots hung in a door she closes to prevent the male gaze in one scene (evidently real shoots and publicity from Monroe's career)--a joke she claims, or rather her husband-writer does through her as actress. Although dubious that this was a woman ashamed, at least entirely, of her past "dancing" (of the nightclub sort for the character, which is to say stripping), who tried to slip in some nudity in her bed scene with Clark Gable, would go skinny dipping in her next, unfinished production for "Something's Got to Give" (1962), and unabashedly admitted to pre-stardom nude photos that would appear in "Playboy" magazine, as Monroe appraiser Amanda Konkle says, "when Roslyn closes the door on Marilyn Monroe, she prompts viewers to interrogate the relationship between the actress and the sexpot." The male gaze and the female to-be-looked-at-ness, male auteur and female star, being seen and being heard, images and words, until screaming in the distance beyond the objectifying look of the men and the camera.

Besides being her, as well as Gable's, last completed film, this reads as something of a culmination of art-and-life reflections in Monroe's oeuvre, exploiting the thin line in Lee Strasberg's Method acting she practiced, of emotional memory, experiences from one's own life to bring them closer to their character, as well as give the movie-goer a seeming naked access to the star, albeit a critical one. From Marilyn to Roslyn, even the names rather rhyme. Speaking of which, Gay to Gable and back also has a reflexive ring to it. On paper, it would seem the Hollywood legend were lost here in a sea of Method actors: Monroe, Montgomery Clift, Eli Wallach, even Kevin McCarthy in a thankless one-scene bit part--all Method actors. But, that's rather the point. A fellow in the repertory style of stage and studio system past, Ritter, or her character, recognizes this, that he's an aging icon, the image of the cowboy, the American Dream. He's also abandoned lovers, as well as his children, if not the other way around, for it. Remarkable contrasted coupling here then at the center of the film, between Monroe and Gable, two screen icons at the end of their ropes. One may either try for a divorce, as with Marilyn/Roslyn or cling to it, as with Gable/Gay.

Comparisons between life and art could be and surely have been made for Clift and Wallach, too. Clift also dying prematurely, as with Monroe and Gable, "The Misfits" sometimes receives blame. Even Ritter ended up in the hospital afterwards for exhaustion. Monroe supposedly hated the film, as surely done no favors by the disintegration of her marriage, and died a year and a half later from probable suicide. Gable quipped Monroe "damn near" gave him a heart attack, and then he had a couple heart attacks and died a few days after the production wrapped. Clift's final words were reportedly, "Absolutely not!," in reply to whether he wanted to watch this very film, which was airing on TV. Of course, assuredly, it was more so the drugs that would kill them, whether booze, pills, cigarettes, or some combination thereof in relation to other underlying medical problems. That particularly seems to reflect Clift's character here, who takes to pain killers, including alcohol, after being kicked around by a rodeo bull--parallels to Clift's real-life painful car crash in 1956. Wallach may be less reported upon, but possibly relevant, he was drafted by the army circa WWII similar to the war veteran character he plays in the film if not in any other particulars.

More to the point, and beyond some simplistic vegetarian parable, even comment on the United States, or again as in "Bus Stop" taming masculinity and the conquering male gaze, the film is all about the image of the Native American as reminder of genocide, collections for the church cemetery, rabbit hunting, dog-food horses, and "why don't you kill yourself" instead you "three dear, sweet, dead men," death as contrasted with the roaming mustangs' freedom of "just living." Mommy, daddy, spousal issues, and rebirth. Everyone as broken as Ritter's arm. Alienated misfits to the modernity of societal wages and slot-machine technological changes around them, cowboys in black and white, the dying Western and the promise of driving into the sunset. Film-as-death again, staged life ceased as still images, brought back to life in projection, dead stars living on as signposts, eternal images. Fittingly misfit.

Works Cited
Konkle, Amanda. Some Kind of Mirror: Creating Marilyn Monroe. Rutgers University Press, 2019.

Miller, Arthur. Tony Kushner, ed. "Finishing the Picture" in Collected Plays 1987-2004. The Library of America, 2015.

Miller, Arthur and Serge Toubiana. The Misfits: Story of a Shoot. Phaidon, 2000.

Morath, Inge. The Road to Reno. Steidl, 2006.