All comments and collages by Brainscan:
Students and faculty in the film department where I went to college talked of this movie with deep reverence and the sort of high falutin words otherwise reserved for the work of Eisenstein and Orson Welles. Beautifully written, wonderfully directed and photographed, edited and acted with consummate skill by everyone involved, and since one of the actresses was Marilyn Monroe at her most vulnerable – and she is in just about every scene – a healthy male cannot keep his eyes off the screen.
Clark Gable plays the part of an alpha male, a silver-backed primate with powers diminished and eyes grown cloudy. He was feeling his age, both actor and character. Within weeks of the movie’s completion, Gable was dead.
Monroe and her character were frightened and fragile, so clearly doomed that even someone who knows nothing of Monroe would have to feel the pain she shows in her face throughout the movie. Some scenes are terribly hard to bear, knowing as we do that Monroe would be dead from an overdose in a matter of months. And the last scene when Monroe and Gable ride away together is impossible to watch more than once. She looks as though she should be happy but she knows it is all temporary, this moment with him, and she knows what is to follow. Yikes, it hurts to think about. And Gable has the look of a man who knows he has won the prize again, one last time before the end comes so very soon.
Anyway, enough of this brouhaha. Marilyn gets very close to revealing her natural wonders a couple of times and now that The Misfits is on HD, I grabbed it and threw together a clip and a few collages.
Scoop’s comments:
The film was released in February of 1961. Clark Gable had already died by then, leaving behind a pregnant, much younger wife. (His grandchild, Maria, was born two years before his son, John Clark!) Marilyn Monroe would follow him during the next summer, at the tender age of 36. In four more years, Monty Clift would complete the trifecta among the film’s stars when he was found dead in his apartment. He was 45.
They were three of the most troubled people in Hollywood.
- Gable’s psyche never recovered from the grief he experienced after the death of his wife, Carole Lombard, in a plane crash.
- Although Clift died of heart disease, his last 10 years, following his 1956 car accident, were called the “longest suicide in history” by his former acting teacher.
- I’m sure you all know what happened to Marilyn.
I’m certain the Huston removed the scene not because he felt it was unnecessary, but because he knew it would have been very hard to sell the film. Toplessness just wasn’t done in a Hollywood movie at that time. Also the discussion in the article about whether it should be released or not is absurd. It is historic and of course should be released. Don’t need any pretend prudish attitudes. And the article bringing up sexual exploitation is as laughable as it always has been. Showing a woman’s nipple is not going to bring about the apocalypse or bring amount any mass calamities. It isn’t going to drive a woman to suicide or bring about any massive feelings of shame. Hollywood has indeed blackballed women for showing their breasts before, but that is Hollywood’s problem and Hollywood’s shame. I long for a day when the media can be taken seriously again.
Loathed the movie.
Marilyn Monroe actually shot a full on topless scene because she thought it was appropriate for her character. The director disagreed. Thankfully, the scene still exists but it still hasn’t been released.