The USPS has issued a set of four stamps honoring great film
directors and the films for which they are most remembered. The four selected
are: John Ford (The Searchers), John Huston (The Maltese Falcon), Frank Capra
(It Happened One Night), and Billy Wilder (Some Like It Hot). We will be
exploring the lives and work of these directors over the next several weeks. In
this post LR Simon reviews The Misfits (1961).
The Misfits is an oddity among John Huston’s films—it’s more
Arthur Miller’s movie than his. Miller wanted a producer for his screenplay
whose vision included more than the bottom line. The result was a film with a
rich Hollywood pedigree that didn’t feel like a Hollywood film.
Miller wrote The Misfits with Marilyn Monroe in mind for the
part of Roslyn. Huston was one of the few directors Monroe trusted, mostly
because he saw her as an actress and not merely as a sex goddess. According to
Miller, Huston “saw her as some kind of a crazy genius; she liked him because
he respected her ability.”
Monroe was unreliable on the set—she didn’t always know her
lines, and despite the fact that her then husband wrote Roslyn for her, she was
very insecure and not convinced that she could play the role. However, some of
the scenes that caused Monroe the most anxiety are among the best of her
career. When she dances deliriously without music and ends by embracing a tree,
she creates a strong sense of longing while also closing herself off from her
new friends. Miller gives her several opportunities to acknowledge the persona
that made her famous while dismantling the image in devastating ways.
Clark Gable, Montgomery Clift, and Eli Wallach play the
three men vying for her attention. All of the main characters are misfits, so
it’s natural that they find each other.
Gable plays Gay, the aging cowboy who hates wage jobs. He’s
a bit of a snob about it, really—he tells Clift at one point that he “stinks of
wages.” Gay has many admirable qualities, perhaps the best being his “great
regard for people,” as Miller put it. Contrast this with his distance from his
family—he just isn’t cut out to be a conventional husband or father. Gable was
unsettled on this film—it was a Western with none of the usual Western tropes.
Miller called it an Eastern Western because the people and their relationships
overwhelmed the cowboy action. It was a great role for Gable; his charm was
there, but muted compared to It Happened One Night or Gone With the Wind, and
Gay was more deeply flawed than Gable’s characters in those two classics.
Huston’s artistic touch makes The Misfits beautiful to
watch, even when the subject is unappealing. He had a light touch as a
director, but he also knew when he had what he wanted. When Clift finished the
first take of his scene in the phone booth, he was surprised that Huston didn’t
want a second take. Huston assured Clift that he’d never do it better than the
first time.
The Misfits remains a powerful examination of the human
condition, with characters yearning to connect with each other but afraid of
the consequences. “It could have ended differently,” according to Miller; in
fact, it could have ended any number of ways. Nothing that happens seems
destined; consequently, when the film ends, the audience can’t assume anything
about the future for these characters.
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