The Misfits (1961)
Directed by John Huston
While filing for a divorce, beautiful ex-stripper Roslyn Taber ends up meeting aging cowboy-turned-gambler Gay Langland and former World War II aviator Guido Racanelli. The two men instantly become infatuated with Roslyn and, on a whim, the three decide to move into Guido's half-finished desert home together. When grizzled ex-rodeo rider Perce Howland arrives, the unlikely foursome strike up a business capturing wild horses.
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What critics compared The Misfits to
A clip from A Night to Remember playfully salutes the downhill night to end all nights for The Roaring 20s, while a scene of Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable in The Misfits poignantly evokes sympathy for characters marinating on the periphery of society.
The Rosses embellish their casually chaotic action with pointed jukebox tunes and TV movies (notably, 1961’s The Misfits ) without ever underlining anything.
After The Prince and the Showgirl Monroe went on to deliver her finest comedic performance in Billy Wilder’s masterpiece Some Like It Hot (1959) and her finest dramatic performance in John Huston’s The Misfits (1961) before dying in 1962 at the age of 36.
She goes at it with much the same lip-smacking wiggle that Marilyn Monroe employed while playing paddle ball in “The Misfits.”
I don't know that she'll ever be able to anchor a film on her own--and her turn here reminds me of Marilyn Monroe's performance in The Misfits: it's a pretty good try, but that's all it is.
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Like the horrific mustang roundup that ends John Hustonâs The Misfits, the animalsâ fear is real and presents an ethical quagmire.
But when they started working on “The Misfits,” their relationship got rough.
Though contention with Billy Wilder on the set of Some Like It Hot adds an interesting dimension in suggesting her awareness at how her Golden Globe winning performance as Sugar Cane was limiting and degrading as a brainless object, it’s interesting how the contention of The Misfits and the troubled production of George Cuckor’s incomplete Something’s Got To Give , which she was (sorta) filming when she died are both overlooked for the third act deliberations of her relationship to President John F. Kennedy (Caspar Phillipson).
But that’s the nature of art, and in movies such as “The Misfits” (1961), “Lonely Are the Brave” (1962), and, more recently, “The Rider” (2017), these noble beasts have served well as a symbol for the untamed soul of a troubled protagonist.
If the opening sequence of The Mustang calls anything to mind from our collective cinematic past, it's the ending of 1961’s The Misfits.
As the old guard screenwriter from Hollywood’s Golden Era, Eli Wallach ( The Misfits , The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly ) is just charming, and the relationship between his character and Winslet’s is sweet and heartwarming.
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The real shame of it is that, unlike other great transitional swan songs (The Misfits, for instance), Bright Lights, Big City comes and goes without demonstrating much awareness that it's got nothing to say about the time that produced it and no instinct for the tide blowing into shore.
Long on expediency and short on subtlety, The Witch Who Came from the Sea is, essentially, Perkins' and Thom's The Misfits, for what it's worth.