Thanks for the memories!

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

I wanted to but couldn't!

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

The Misfits tells the story of recently divorced Roslyn (Marilyn Monroe), and the friendship that she develops with car mechanic Guido (Eli Wallach), aging cowboy Gay (Clark Gable) and failing rodeo rider Perce (Montgomery Clift). Centered on how their relationships develop during their time at Guidos house in the Nevada desert and at the Dayton rodeo, these relationships finally become tested when the three men decide to hunt horses to be sold to a dog food manufacturer, much to Roslyns distress.The Misfits essentially is about the way that people inadvertently treat others badly, culminating in the obvious mistreatment of the mustangs, innocent beings in the proceedings. The irony here is The Misfits script was meant as a gift from Arthur Miller to his wife, Monroe; the role of Roslyn being one that Marilyn could truly act. Yet Miller strangely unfavourably portrays Roslyn from time to time in the film. Occasionally naive, occasionally nothing more than the image of the sex symbol Monroe desperately craved to escape.Regardless, Marilyn puts in her greatest performance, one which sexy and alluring, but filled with sadness and sensitivity.All the characters are reaching points in their life where they feel they having nothing left; the washed up cowboy, the failing rodeo rider, the new divorcee and the mechanic looking to quit his job. Meeting each other sees changes in our two protagonists; Roslyn starts to become a poster girl for independence, while drawing out Gays never seen before domestic side. However these changes are minor, meaning the development of the characters and any intended arc they are meant to have to their personas are more like a gentle incline. Gay retains his stubbornness, catching the horse himself at the end just to release it again in an act of defiance, to show he can still make his own decisions. Roslyn's breakdown at the fate at the horses, is sweet, but ultimately shows her as weak. Despite being part of the titular misfits, Perce and Guido are reduced to supporting characters who have no development whatsoever.The genre of the film is mixed too, with elements of buddy movie, romance, western and probably more, all rolled into one. While genre blending is all fine and good when its done well, here it seems halfhearted on all counts. The western element is perhaps the most dominant, but the whole film isn't stylised enough to be a classic western. There are moments when the narrative also feels like several stories that don't always fit together as they should. Perce, the rodeo cowboy generally feels superfluous to the plot, except when Roslyn hears his life story and expresses sorrow at his past.Overly long, The Misfits would have benefited from a shortened run time, the catching of the mustangs in the closing act, seems needlessly long. There are moments also, for example, Guido wrangling the horses in the plane for Gay and Perce to capture, when the score is overly dramatic and out of place, building up to an anticlimax of nothing at all. And finally the ending of the film, is strangely abrupt considering the run time, and one can only assume that Gay and Roslyn live happily ever after.BOTTOM LINE: Marilyns greatest performance in a film where the characters, or lack of, misfits.

Version I saw: UK Bluray releaseActors: 7/10Plot/script: 8/10Photography/visual style: 7/10Music/score: 6/10Overall: 8/10Screen icons Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable made a film together. By the time it was released, Gable was dead, and Monroe died before completing her next film. If nothing else, that makes The Misfits a curiosity worth investigating.The screenplay is by famed playwright Arthur Miller, so it is unsurprisingly somewhat theatrical, and I can imagine much of the action taking place on a theatre stage. Famed director John Huston adds the cinematic touches, though, to make this very much a visual film.Miller was also married to Monroe, divorcing during the making of the film, and this is where the uncomfortable parallels begin, because Monroe's character Roslyn is herself a divorcée. However, as odd as it is, this must also be considered quite ahead of its time: divorce was much less common in those days, and fault still considered a key pillar in proceedings.Roslyn is shown to be divorced for a reason though. The Misfits revolves around three damaged personalities, in what is an unremittingly bleak work. Montgomery Clift (who also died young) is a thrill-seeking rodeo rider who is so tragically doomed that the repeated foreshadowing of his demise is almost funny. Gable is an old-fashioned cowboy, ill-at-ease with a world which is changing around him and rendering him obsolete. Again, fiction mirrors life here, for Gable's heyday was 20 years previously. However, whereas his character Gay (it stops being funny before too long) refuses to adapt, it seemed to me that Gable was making too much effort to retain his physique into his late 50s, probably contributing to the massive heart attack which ended his life not long after filming.The film itself shows some signs of its age. Attitudes towards drink and women are uncomfortably dated, and some of the treatment of animals required to film the climactic horse wrangling scenes would never be allowed today. On the other hand, some of the shots of Monroe, clearly intended to be very risqué, seem ridiculously tame to the modern eye.The main theme is one of disillusionment, an unwillingness to adapt to a changing world. It's uneasy watching, especially as it asks whether we are the same. Miller's deft handling of the pace and rising sense of doom is a testament to his genius as a playwright, as are the numerous great lines that pepper the dialogue. Monroe has an odd approach to the acting, but this contributes to a performance as strong as anyone's in a cast of very strong performances. Her manic breakdown at the very end, filmed in a long shot against the backdrop of barren desert, is grimly fascinating viewing.Despite the presence of two screen icons and a directing legend though, the one person who comes out of this excellent production with the most credit is Miller.

The Misfits - A film that still come to the top of the great American films. Sure is a underrated movie, perhaps because it is the end of a movie career of Marilyn Monroe - who died in a short time - a little discredited at the time, because of his complicated life and aimlessly. But it is a great movie. Marylin has a perfect interpretation here, as the fragile Roslyn. Clark Gable also in late career (he would die shortly after the conclusion of the film), can give huge credibility to his character, a weary cowboy, no hope, no future. Eli Wallach, one of the greatest actors ever seen, has an extraordinary, unusual performance in his career. And Montgomery Clift manages to convey the anguish of a man who also walks to an uncertain, fragile and tormented future. Not enough this unusual group, we still have Thelma Ritter, possibly the greatest supporting actress in film history. Perfect and captivating. A photo in black and white is wonderful, perfectly suited to the film aims to show us. John Huston has here one of his good moments. The story is very good, with a screenplay by Arthur Miller and emotionally charged. The cast is impeccable as I said and the film has a touching end, where humans and nature are realizing that life is very simple. The man who complicates it. Worth watching The Misfits, and I mean even the day will come that he will be hailed as one of the greatest movies ever made

This movie is about despair. Despair at the passing of a way of life. Despair at disappointed hopes and dreams. Despair at the loss of a loved one, either through death, divorce or disinterest. Knowing that going in and if you don't mind downbeat films there are some really moving performances from a cast full of legends.Heavy with gloom there is still much too admire though Miller's prose is at times heavy and tending towards pretension. Marilyn's woozy sexuality coming through a haze of pills and booze at times still suits her character's searching and displaced loneliness. Clark Gable accepted his part after first choice Robert Mitchum passed. Mitchum would have been great of course and publicly stated he regretted not taking the role since he and Marilyn were longtime friends, before both were famous he had worked with her first husband, and he felt that around him she would have been able to pull herself together as she had on River of No Return. This was the end of the line for Gable and his weathered appearance and weariness actually suits the role better than Mitchum's ruggedness would have at that point. The film contains some of the best acting Clark ever did.Clift and his sad broken looks make a powerful impact and Wallach scores well too but the great Thelma Ritter is somewhat shortchanged since she disappears about halfway through the picture. Her astringent tartness would have been most welcome later in the film when the real heavy going takes place.