[Demdike@Cult Labs]

The Misfits (1961)

Not so much a film with a story as a look into the lives of a disparate group of people who kind of meet up accidentally and find they are all as screwed up as each other in a film that looks at loneliness, longing and in the end simple friendship between damaged souls.

Starring Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift, Eli Wallach and Thelma Ritter this is a bit of an acting tour-de-force ensemble piece. Of course sadly for Gable and Monroe it would be their last film before their untimely deaths and Clift would also be dead a mere four years later aged just 45.

With this information watching The Misfits is a whole new experience. There's an air of sadness that runs throughout. Monroe's marriage to script writer Arthur Miller was in meltdown and she was in a drug and alcohol abuse hell throughout filming and production had to be shut down whilst director John Huston sent her to detox whilst Gable was seemingly self destructive insisting he did his own stunts such as being dragged across the Nevada desert by a wild horse. Huston himself lead by (bad) example and was often drunk on set. Despite this, Clark Gable gives the performance of his career as does Monroe and arguably Montgomery Clift and Eli Wallach as well.

Yet as you watch the air of melancholy subsides for the finale as Gable leads the group into the Nevada desert in order to capture wild mustangs (The actual misfits of the title - not the cast) to sell for dog meat Some of these sequences are astonishingly powerful as if all involved were following Clift ,who was, along with Brando and Dean one of the original Hollywood method actors. In fact throughout, the film seems a long way from the typical Hollywood studio productions the likes of Gable and Monroe were familiar with.

The Misfits isn't an easy watch but it's a rewarding one. Simply stunning!