The Misfits

The first hour and a half of this two-hour film is mighty slow going. It's mostly exposition, back-story, some of which could have been edited out. The plot rambles and meanders. There is a lot of glib talk, a lot of filler. The cameraman seems to be asleep. The characters themselves are dispirited, drifting emotionally, buffeted by the storms of life. They whine a lot. Booze helps them cope. The film score is sad, sentimental, and sounds like it was borrowed from a Douglas Sirk melodrama.

Then, as the film enters its final thirty minutes, things change. The pace quickens. The dialogue subsides somewhat. The cameraman wakes up. Drama and tension escalate. The most memorable scenes occur in this final Act, on the bleak, empty salt flats, where the characters confront a herd of wild horses, which in turn forces the characters to confront their own inner wildness. Here at the finale, the B&W visuals transcend human effort. The simple dialogue soars to eloquence. "How do you find your way back in the dark?", asks Marilyn Monroe's character. Comes the response: "Just head for that big star, straight on". Cut to a shot of the vast empty landscape on a clear night, with eyes looking upward, an intuition of eternity.

How ironic these last scenes are. Back in 1960 no one could have known that the film's powerful ending would symbolize such a prescient real-life ending to the careers of two Hollywood legends.