The Misfits

Plot synopsis:
In Reno, Nevada, Roslyn Tabor (Monroe) is a 30-year-old woman who has just gotten a quickie six-week divorce from her inattentive husband Raymond (McCarthy). After leaving the Washoe County Courthouse, Roslyn's best local friend, Isabelle Steers, (Ritter), who is also a divorcee, takes her to a bar at Harrah's Reno for drinks to let the reality of her divorce sink in. While there, they meet an aging cowboy named Gaylord 'Gay' Langland (Gable) and his tow truck driver friend Guido (Wallach). They invite Roslyn and Isabelle to Guido's place in the Nevada country to help her forget about the divorce, after Gay tells Roslyn that he is also divorced. They arrive at the unfinished house Guido built for his late wife, who died several years earlier during childbirth. They drink and dance. Roslyn has too much to drink, so Gay drives her home to Reno.
Eventually, Roslyn and Gay move into Guido's half-finished house and start to work on it. One day after breakfast, Gay tells Roslyn how he wishes he were more of a father to his own children, whom he has not seen for some years. Later that afternoon, Roslyn and Gay argue when Gay states his intention to find and kill the rabbits which have been eating the vegetable garden they planted outside Guido's house.
When Guido and Isabelle later show up at the house, Gay suggests that they round up wild mustangs to sell. They plan to go to a local rodeo in Dayton to look for and hire a third man for the job. Along the way, they meet Perce Howland (Clift), a cowboy friend of Gay's who is also on his way to the Dayton rodeo to compete. Gay offers to pay for the broke Perce's $10 rodeo entry fee if he helps the group round up wild mustangs for slaughter afterward. Isabelle sees her ex-husband Charles and his new wife Clara, and decides to invite them to her home instead of going to the rodeo with Gay, Guido, Perce, and Roslyn. Before the rodeo, Guido, Perce, Roslyn and Gaylord all drink heavily at a Dayton bar, where wagers were made and won on Roslyn's ability to play a game of paddle ball. The group is nearly involved in a fist fight when another patron at the bar spanks Roslyn's bottom.
At the rodeo, Roslyn becomes somewhat upset when Guido tells her how the horses are made to buck with an irritating flank strap. She declares that all rodeos should be banned. Later, Perce is thrown by a bucking horse and Roslyn begs him to go to a hospital, but he insists on riding a bull he had already signed up and paid to ride. He gets thrown again, resulting in a head injury.
Later, after Roslyn dances with Perce, he passes out in a back alley. When he regains consciousness, he sees her crying over him. He says that he never had anyone cry for him before and that he wished he had a friend to talk to. He tells her how his mother changed after his father died, giving his stepfather the ranch Perce's father wanted to leave to Perce. A drunken Gay then fetches Roslyn, telling her that he wants her to meet his kids, whom he claims he unexpectedly ran into. When Gay discovers his children have already left, he causes a public scene.
Later on, during the drive home to Reno, a drunken Guido asks if Roslyn has left Gay and offers to take his place. Back at Guido's house, Guido, intoxicated and sleepless, attempts to finish the patio he started. Perce awakens and nearly tears his bandages off, forgetting about his recent injury. Roslyn puts him to bed and sits down with Gay. He asks her if a woman like her would ever want to have a child with him. She avoids the issue, and Gay goes to bed.
The next day, Gay, Guido and Perce prepare to go after the mustangs, and Roslyn reluctantly tags along. After they catch a stallion and four mares, Rosalyn becomes upset when she learns that the mustangs will be sold for dog food. She then tells Gay she did not know she was falling in love with a killer. He tells her that he did things for her that he never did for any other woman, such as making the house a home and planting the garden.
After the horses are captured, Roslyn begs Gay to release the horses. He considers doing it, but when she offers to pay $200, it angers him. Guido tells Roslyn that he would let them go if she would leave Gay for him. She rebuffs him, rightly telling him he only cares about himself. Perce also asks her if she wants him to set the horses free, but she declines because she thinks it would only start a fight. He frees the stallion anyway.
After Gay chases down and subdues the horse all by himself, he lets it go and says he just did not want anybody making up his mind for him. They get into Gay's truck. As they're driving Roslyn tells Gay that she will leave the next day. Gay stops the truck to pick up his dog, and watches Roslyn joyfully untethering it. Gay and Roslyn realize that they still love each other, and drive off into the night.

Tags: allegory, romantic, atmospheric

Review:
"The Misfits" is literally about four people who don't fit into society A divorcée (Monroe) meets cowboy Langland (Gable), who is getting too old for his job They decide to live together A former rodeo star (Clift) and an unemployed mechanic (Wallach) join in the drifting Huston's masculine images are stripped of their former glory, existing only one rough exterior which fails to conceal what has been lost Eventually the men agree to round up wild mustangs for a dog food manufacturer Scenes of the trio and Monroe speeding across the prairie in a beaten-up truck, raising a hurricane of dust while attempting to rope the stallions, are the strongest evocations of lost souls wandering in time Huston's film established Marilyn Monroe as a dramatic sensuous actress, thus liberating her from a decade of steamy cheesecake roles in sexy comedies.
The Misfits is famous for being the last completed film of two cultural icons, Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe.
I can't say it is an entertaining movie, but it is certainly profound and stays with you.Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift were all wonderful.
Knowing that it is Clark Gable's and Marilyn Monroe's last film added to the aura of finality at the end.
The Misfits, the last film of Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe, is a truly haunting film that never leaves you long after you've finished watching it.
It is about a restless fragile divorcée finding a new life in Reno with a couple of cowboys, one of which has a gambling problem and survives on slaughtering mustangs to make dog food.Not only does this showcase Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable's exceptional (and often underestimated) talent, but it is a very beautiful movie that lingers on in your mind long after you have finished watching it.
Marilyn's equally iconic co-stars  Clark Gable, Montgomery Clift, Eli Wallach, Thelma Ritter  realize their parts with finesse and feeling.
Whether intentional or not, these facial shots of grief and pain are exquisitely disturbing, as much for their fleshing out Marilyn's personal travail at the time the movie was made as for the mixed-up character she was playing.Her sensitivity to the plight of the wild horses the ranchers are capturing and killing for illegal profit, is brilliantly well-paced, her anguished dialog in defense of their freedom evocative of larger social issues coming to the fore in the 1960s.
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.
This collaboration between acclaimed playwright Arthur Miller and director John Huston, while not without flaw, is a consistently engaging study of the inevitable death by degrees of the faux values of the American Dream.Guys like Gay (Clark Gable) are littered throughout small towns across North America - these are folks who remember how it 'Used to Be,' and who feel lost in the New World Order, where the sort of machismo that manifests itself in wrestling 800 pound stallions to the ground single-handedly is no longer a ruling concern.
Gay's mantra, `Better than wages, ain't it?' is a paean to a simpler time when free men didn't have to work for The Man, but could take care of themselves, thanks very much.Roslyn (Marilyn Monroe), on the other hand, is a more rare bird: flighty and sensuous, beautiful and beaten, she is this world's canary in the coalmine.
The Misfits was the last film of its stars Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe, and they couldn't have asked for a better send-off.
"The Misfits" is well-known for being the last completed film of two of the most iconic stars in film history, Clark Gable, the man who became known as the "King of Hollywood", and Marilyn Monroe, the woman who, at the height of her fame, had a good claim to be its Queen.
The film was written by Arthur Miller, directed by John Huston, and, besides Gable and Monroe, starred actors of the quality of Montgomery Clift, Eli Wallach and Thelma Ritter.
The performance of Monroe, like a delicate flower dancing over a volcano, is crucial to the film, because it is truthful.There's a moment where Gay, the rugged and tough cowboy played by Clark Gable, gently gazes at her and says "you're the saddest girl I ever saw".
But Huston's confident directing and Miller's screenplay allow a few outbursts of emotions to each character, so the anger can steam out, even a drunken Gay, desperately cries for his lost children, and this is perhaps the greatest acting moment of Gable's career, pathetic but certainly not pitiful.
(As an aside, I found out that Arthur Miller wrote the screenplay while in Reno waiting for his divorce to be finalized; significantly, the film opens with the character of Roslyn getting her divorce from an abusive husband).There's the delightful Marilyn Monroe (as Roslyn Taber) in her next to last movie, trying to find a man worthy enough to believe in; Clark Gable in his last movie (as Gay Langland) the restless, older cowboy  resourceful, independent, strong, but with a touch of cynicism  who's attracted to Roslyn despite himself; the always vulnerable Montgomery Clift (as Perce Howland), who drifts from rodeo to rodeo, trying to forget his past; and then there's the ever-present Eli Wallach  one of Hollywood's greatest  playing the widower (Guido) who can't forget his past, but for all the wrong reasons.All three men are, of course, attracted to Roslyn, and all the while Thelma Ritter (as Isabelle Stears, and an older friend of Roslyn's) tries to help her sort out what she should do.Together the group stay for a while at Guido's unfinished house, out near the Nevada desert, and it is there that Roslyn decides she will try to live with Gay for a while, to see if things work out for them both.
And the editing is just excellent as the cowboys bring down each horse, one by one, leaving the stallion to last, in a final great tussle (in a Clark Gable biographical documentary I saw, I found out that he did much of the heavy work in those scenes; no mean feat for an aging star in his sixtieth year.
The superb cast were well versed in these matters, as their performances show with striking clarity, with Gables tragic loss of  wife Carole Lombard during the war, Clifts horrific car-crash a few years earlier, and Monroes ongoing breakup with Miller paired with her own personal demons.
The beautiful Roslyn has just divorced and she meets two friends, Guido and Gay, who take her to Guido's house.She and Gay, an aging ex-cowboy and a gambler start having something going on between them.But Roslyn is against how Gay sells the mustangs he captures to the slaughterhouses for the manufacture of dogfood.Then in the picture appears Perce Howland, a drifter rodeo rider.John Huston, a big-time gambler directed The Misfits (1961).Clark Gable is terrific playing Gay Langland.Marilyn Monroe as Roslyn Taber really shows in this film that she could act.The legendary actor Eli Wallach is Guido.It's great how Clift plays that scene where he talks on the phone with his mother.Two of the great stars of last century had to finish their careers to this movie due to their early deaths.Gable had a heart attack after two days after the filming ended and died ten days later.He was 59.Monroe died the next year to an alleged drug overdose.She was 36.This film was an end of an era.It showed us these two for the last time on screen.And the movie was something that wasn't seen too much after this..
Great performances by Clark Gable, Eli Wallach, Montgomery Clift, Thelma Ritter and specially Marilyn..
The film has such a human range yet it harmonizes with the genre in such a sublime way.John Huston is great here, Miller evokes such harsh beauty and a tragic optimism near the end, and the performances of Monroe, Clift, Gable, and Wallach are beyond excellent.
The story of a distraught divorcee looking for happiness with a barrage of Reno cowboys may sound lumbering, but this is truly an excellent film, featuring what I believe was Monroe's best performance (WHY wasn't she Oscar-nominated for this?).
John Huston's direction of Arthur Miller's screenplay is exceptional, and each of the actors (especially Gable, Thelma Ritter and Eli Wallach) give vibrant performances.
Hard to tell--she goes from happy to sad within each segment with little explanation given.CLARK GABLE's character is no more illuminating--he seems to be playing a lazy but good-natured drifter who doesn't really know where he's going or what he wants and he gets lifeless support from MONTGOMERY CLIFT who seems to be (like Monroe) in some sort of daze most of the time.
As you can see, this will never rank as one of my favorite films even though the script is by the renowned Arthur Miller and the direction is by the equally renowned John Huston who had a hard time coaxing Marilyn Monroe onto the set.Pretentious from start to finish is the only verdict I can come up with and a difficult film to watch without losing patience.Unfortunately, its chief distinction today is that it was the last film of Gable and Monroe..
As much as I really enjoyed this film, I can't help but feel that Arthur Miller created the role of Roslyn Taber with the influence of Marilyn's life; Her dialog throughout the movie really sounded like a reflection of her childhood troubles and tragedies.
Although this was to be the last film roles for Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe, The Misfits is a touching film that served as a springboard for environmental issues, especially the plight of the Nevadan wild Mustang.
A recently divorced blonde bombshell in Reno (Marilyn Monroe) befriends three guys and stirs their passions: An aging cowboy (Clark Gable), a cynical bush pilot (Eli Wallach) and a brooding rodeo contender (Montgomery Clift).
The Misfits was her last completed film, - she never completed the filming of George Cukor's remake of My Favourite Wife (1940), Something's Got to Give, which has been subsequently released as a short - and I feel that it captures much of what made Norma Jean Mortensen, Marilyn Monroe.She plays Roslyn, a newly divorced woman, who meets up with a couple of older men, Guido (Eli Wallach) and Gay (Clark Gable - this was also his last film), and escapes with them to a country house.
The screenplay was written specifically for her by her then husband, playwright Arthur Miller, and he clearly knew her need for that elusive father figure, and her need to soak up attention, and wear her body (and image) as a mask to her internal pain, and tragic sense of abandonment.Whilst certainly not her best film (director John Huston had stated that she was difficult, and the decision to shoot in black and white was due to her bloodshot eyes - caused by alcohol and prescription drugs), that surely would go to Some Like it Hot (1959), but this is absolutely her greatest, and most revealing role.
The scene of him with Marilyn Monroe makes you think of two victims of life, comforting one another.How Gable could show so much affections for Marilyn when she infuriated him with her continual lateness, shows what a good actor he finally was in this final film of is.
This is a classic United Artists film starring Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe with fine ensemble cast support by Montgomery Clift, Thelma Ritter, and Eli Wallach.
Movie fans will note John Huston directed MM in her first classic role in MGM's The Asphalt Jungle and this MM's last completed film.Arthur Miller wrote the screen play for his wife Marilyn Monroe.
And finally Marilyn Monroe, a recent divorcée, trying to re-start her life.At times the story itself does seem slow, as another review mentioned, but the characters and their psycho-dramas are well worth watching.
As the men, and their friend Perce begin to fall for Roslyn, the real nature of their characters, the stuff that shows with time, begins to come out.With an all star cast, a director with classics under his belt and a script from Arthur Miller, the credits of this film made me believe I had made the right decision in taping it.
He also draws good performances from his cast, which is a bigger feat than it sounds as I personally didn't feel they were given more than one or two aspects of character to work with  certainly I didn't seem them as people so much as performances.Despite this the cast are roundly good and time has added this film even more of a sombre tone in that it was the last films of Gable and the penultimate one from Monroe, with Clift only a few years behind.
Her work in John Huston's THE MISFITS may be the only time on screen that we glimpse Marilyn Monroe as a real person, both as an individual and as a character, and not as an icon or a Hollywood contrivance.
Roslyn finds companionship with three men: the ironically named Gay, an aging cowboy played by Clark Gable (himself a symbol of fading Hollywood glory); Perce, a battered and deteriorating rodeo rider played by the battered and deteriorated Montgomery Clift (who like Marilyn has become a gay icon); and Guido, who, as played by Eli Wallach with a disconcerting mixture of graciousness and lust, seems to be Miller's vision of Monroe's male fans.
It's amazing people crow over B-rated comedy like "Some Like It Hot" (making it #1 at AFI for comedy and #50 overall at IMDB) yet flame a John Huston film & Arthur Miller screenplay!"The Misfits" is as topical today as it ever was (like any good work of art), and not just for the cause of animal rights or LV wild mustangs.
This is the film's one major flaw and may have resulted from Monroe's fear that Wallach's character as originally scripted would over shadow hers.Perce (Montgomery Clift) is a relatively young rodeo rider who has been kicked in the head a few too many times.
I'm sure they didn't think about this when they were filming, but The Misfits has become somewhat of a mystic film experience since it is now known as the last role featuring Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe, two of the biggest stars in film history.
Scenes between these two movie giants are interesting to watch, especially Monroe, who seems like she has completely immersed herself in this role and does some things you wouldn't expect of Marilyn Monroe.The supporting cast is also big-named with Montgomery Clift, Eli Wallach, and Thelma Ritter.
Clark Gables last screen performance is good, & Marilyn Monroes last completed film, ironically, is OK too.
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).
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.
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..
John Huston's filming of Arthur Miller's THE MISFITS was dismissed at the time -- even by its doomed stars (well, "doomed" except for Eli Wallach, who is with us still at the grand old age of 137) but this poignant parable, set in the Nevada foothills, has aged as well as almost any film Marilyn ever did.
The cast are excellent too, The Misfits was both Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe's last films, and this film is an affectionate enough tribute to them.
Director: John Huston Writer: Arthur Miller 1961"The Misfits", would, sadly be the final film, for both Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable.
Early on in the movie, Marilyn Monroe's Roslyn tells Gay, played by Clark Gable in arguably his best performance, that she doesn't know what to do next with her life.
As the credits rolled by I thought to myself that this film must be a classic with the names Monroe, Gable, Clift, Houston, Miller, Wallach.
Clark Gable does his best, Marilyn Monroe actually acts more than usual, Montgomery Clift is funny, Eli Wallach is wonderful, and John Huston is a legend.
In Reno, Nevada, voluptuous Marilyn Monroe (as Roslyn Taber) obtains a divorce; then, she attracts the attention of three boozing cowboys: Clark Gable (as Gay Langland), Montgomery Clift (as Perce Howland), and Eli Wallach (as Guido).
indeed, the stars are out tonight.******** The Misfits (2/1/61) John Huston ~ Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift, Thelma Ritter.
Marilyn Monroe portrays a newly divorced woman in Reno, who, accompanied by her friend Thelma Ritter, hooks up with 3 men - Clark Gable, Eli Wallach, and Montgomery Clift.
The method actors - Monroe, Clift and Wallach and classical stalwart Clark Gable assume the roles of Roslyn, Perce, Guido and Gay respectively, with Thelma Ritter acting in the supporting part of Isabelle.
For Clark Gable, the crusty old cowboy, this recently divorced woman played by Marilyn Monroe was seen as the child that he wanted to father after a wasted life in which he 'lost' his real children.
Starring three screen luminaries of towering magnitude - Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift, the film falls short of its lofty ambitions but not for lack of trying.
Some of the finest actors of the late 50's early 60's, Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, Eli Wallach, Montgomery Clift, Thelma Ritter are gathered together in Reno, Nevada by the master John Huston.