The Misfits: John Huston

John Huston's The Misfits is one of the most intelligent Westerns that I have ever seen.  Perhaps that is largely because it isn't necessarily a Western, but a powerful drama that involves cowboys.  Armed with a powerful story and screenplay by Arthur Miller, The Misfits is a penetrating examination of the death of the Old West.  Marilyn Monroe plays Roslyn, a recent divorced young woman who is drifting through life.  She meets a group of ex-cowboys and rodeo riders who make extra money capturing wild horses and selling them to dog food plants.  They are alienated and unhappy as they are now living parodies of what they once represented.  Roslyn comes into their lives as a soothing balm and a strict conscience that forces them to reevaluate who they are.  The film is a three pronged attack: the directing, writing, and acting are all superb.  John Huston proves once again that he is one of America's greatest unsung directors by focusing the raw power of Arthur Miller's screenplay and the mighty performances given by his actors.  The Misfits has some of the greatest casting that I have ever encountered in a Western.  The ex-cowboys are played by Clark Gable, Montgomery Clift, and Eli Wallach.  The three were well past their prime at the time of the film's production.  Therefore, their dialogue and acting carries a naturalistic weight borne through real life experience.  But the true star of the film is Marilyn Monroe as Roslyn.  I would argue that she gives her career's greatest performance in The Misfits.  Why?  Because she unlike many of her biggest and most important roles, she wasn't playing the character of Marilyn Monroe under a different name.  She was genuinely acting and not coasting through the power of her cult of personality.  And what a performance it was.  It is one of the many reasons that The Misfits is one of the unsung classics of the Western genre.

9/10