Marilyn Monroe’s last cinematic stand

More than 50 years after her death, Marilyn Monroe remains one of the most celebrated Hollywood personalities.

This weekend, Portland State students will have a chance to see the iconic pinup model onscreen at 5th Avenue Cinema’s showing of director John Huston’s 1961 western romance, The Misfits.

Set in the dusty Nevada countryside, The Misfits is about the rugged rebound of newly divorced Roslyn Taber (Monroe). Having left her neglectful husband in Reno, she and her friend Isabelle Steers (Thelma Ritter) fall in with a posse of cowboys who make their living ranging the mountains in pursuit of free-running mustangs.

The men are as free as the horses they hunt. Long ago, they foreswore a life of wages for the open wilderness, but the cowboys become helplessly entangled by the wiles of the now-single Roslyn.

The women meet the cowboys through Guido (Eli Wallach), a widower pilot and war veteran who sets his sights on bubbly, idealistic Roslyn. He introduces her to the aging frontiersman, Gay Langland (Clark Gable), an old hand at the game of wooing visiting city girls. The men convince the despondent divorcee to spend a little time in the Reno countryside, where the whiskey flows and the courting begins.

Both Langland and Guido become infatuated with Roslyn. A rivalry soon develops, but the men shrug it off after the girl falls for Langland. The pair stays together at Guido’s house. The men decide to take Roslyn on an expedition into the mountains to hunt horses.

On their way, they stop by a rodeo and pick up another of Langland’s friends, show-cowboy Perce Howland (Montgomery Clift). Perce, too, becomes enthralled with Roslyn when she tends to his injuries after a bull ride goes awry.

Roslyn and the three men take the party to the mountains, and only there does Roslyn learn that a successful hunt will mean the death of the horses. She battles with the men to save the animals; the men battle each other, and themselves, as their love for the city girl clashes with their long-held free-range lifestyles.

The strength of The Misfits lies in its complex portrayal of love. All of the men fall for Roslyn, but each expresses his emotions in different ways.

Old-timer Langland fawns over the much younger Roslyn as if he was her protective mentor; Guido appeals to her sympathies and her ego, showering her with distant compliments and invoking his dead wife; Howland enters the story as a drunk and a mercenary, but his affection for Roslyn brings out his better nature.

Monroe’s performance is inconsistent. She opens the film with a gripping portrayal of a divorcee’s listless melancholy. She conveys palpable sadness in the opening scenes. Unfortunately, her character is often undercut by cheap appeals to her status as a sex symbol. She spends much of the film pawing on every male present and flashing her best set of come-hither eyes.

The film makes a valiant effort to straddle genres, borrowing elements from romance and westerns, while adding a dash of comedy. The results are strong but not seamless.

The opening feels almost more like a film noir, with its sexy score and solemn tone. The middle section drifts in tone and purpose, but the film settles into itself toward the end. The sobriety of the open range brings clarity to the characters, who are forced to stop drinking to start taking action.

As Monroe and Gable’s final film, The Misfits has a secure place in cinema history. Written by the great American playwright Arthur Miller (Monroe’s then–husband), the film seems to idolize Monroe’s character. Shortly after filming ended, Gable suffered a fatal heart-attack, and Monroe’s relationship with Miller, along with her health, deteriorated.

The Misfits is far from perfect. There will be moments you’ll adore and moments you’ll wonder what the hell Huston and Miller were thinking. It is ultimately for its importance to the history of cinema that I recommend the film, especially if you’re a die-hard cinephile. ■