The Misfits (1961)

The BFI’s centenary celebration of the life of Marilyn Monroe will show special screenings of her films from 1st June with the Misfits being shown on 5^th June 2026.

The Misfits (1961, B&W) was Marilyn Monroe’s last completed film that also starred Clark Gable in what was his last film too. Directed by John Huston, the renown American auteur (see the review of his directional debut the Maltese Falcon (1941) https://thelanguageoffilm.com/2021/09/18/the-maltese-falcon-1941/ ) and written by Arthur Miller, the husband of Marilyn Monroe who wrote the script especially for her, the film is an accomplished farewell to the silver screen for two of Hollywood’s biggest stars, with neither knowing this would be the unfortunate case. 

The story brings together four American misfits whose lives cross paths in the town of Reno and the neighbouring Nevada desert. The spotlight is firmly on Marilyn Monroe in her role as the vulnerable blonde bombshell, Rosy, a divorcee whose dreams of being a successful performer are fading. The other cast play their part in bringing their own misfit stories to the fore with Clark Gable as Gay, the aging cowboy with a liking for the ladies and out to make a buck anyway he can in an old skool way with his “better than wages, ain’t it?” expression, and Montgomery Clift playing another cowboy nearing the end of his rodeo heyday, punch drunk on the fumes of the horses and whiskey lifestyle. The collective is completed with a supporting role from Eli Wallach (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly), playing the mechanic, whose countryside house is the setting for the misfits to gather and whose own relationship failure, with the loss of his wife, anchors a morose undertone of the gang of misfits out for some fun and adventure in the mountain desert.

There is plenty of lightness amongst the dark in this poignant storytelling of the evolving landscape of the West especially with the stellar screen presence of Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable. From the outset there are comedy moments that lighten the mood as the guys all chase the flirtatious Rosy established from the beginning when she has to get her car fixed, so she can arrive at her divorce settlement hearing, as it has got badly damaged from all the men crashing into her.

The film’s anti-western tag is perhaps a factor in why it didn’t receive great reviews at the time of release but it has since grown in appreciation. The rodeo road trip highlights some of the negative aspects of a brutally tough sport along with mustanging (catching wild horses for sale) which also gets an unflattering close up showing. But these perspectives make the film all the more intense and maintain its relevance today with its fraught tension of differences in changing times, which the film depicts both critically and entertainingly through its characterisations.

The quality of the script, director and cast provides a fitting platform for Hollywood legend Marilyn Monroe to be at her most flirtatious and vulnerable best, at the centre of attention and slightly unhinged in a provocative, modern times western that even in black and white is worthy of seeing on the big screen, and despite or because of all her acting critics Marilyn Monroe remains hard to take your eyes off of.