The Misfits (1961)

The Misfits still lingers on in my mind after having watched it recently. It's haunting and poetic, maybe not even purposefully so, but the line between character and actor is ever so faint, which makes you feel the characters' pain ten-fold then what you normally would. 

 Marilyn Monroe's character is very human and almost pure; her eyes are always darting around innocuously searching for a way out. It seens like she always desperate for something, searching for a hint of hope fsr off in the distance, especially in the second half of the film. Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift also play broken characters delivering lines like "No one has ever cared for me before." and "Nothing can live until something dies." 

 The movie is drenched in the stench of death and emptiness until the final scene, where the camera fades out on Clark and Marilyn embracing eachother, an eerie foreshadowing to their fates not too long after filming wrapped. Clark Gable died of a heart attack ten days later, and Marilyn meets her tragic end about a year after Gable, whom she idolized since she was young. 

 This is by far Marilyn's best acting she's ever done, falling into character almost too well. She allegedly wasn't fond of her own acting in the film, which makes you think, was it because it hit too close to home? Given that she passed away less than a year after its premiere, she didn't have a chance to look back on it. 

 The film is at its heart a western, with many tropes of the genre standing strong. If you aren't already a fan of westerns like myself, this movie won't change your mind. But I personally appreciated this as a spell-binding work of art.