Putting the Pieces Together: “The Misfits”

The Misfits (1961) is an ambitious contemporary western that seems to be laced with tragedy. The film, written by Arthur Miller and directed by John Huston, was shot on location in rural Nevada, and placed heavy demands on cast and crew. Top-billed Clark Gable, age 59, suffered a heart attack two days after filming ended, and died ten days later. Though Miller’s script was tailored to the talents and the persona of his wife, Marilyn Monroe, their marriage was fracturing by the time production began. An exhausted and emotionally unstable Monroe was hospitalized for two weeks in August, forcing Huston to suspend filming. Ultimately The Misfits would prove to be the last picture Monroe ever completed: in 1962 she began work on the ill-fated Something’s Got to Give before dying of a barbiturate overdose at age 36. Co-star Montgomery Clift, suffering from substance abuse and emotional trauma following a serious car wreck, made only three  more films before his death at age 45. (Happily, character actor Eli Wallach, the third of the ageing cowboys who lust after Monroe’s character in the film, remained with us—an invaluable cinematic presence—until the ripe old age of 98.)

 The opening credits for The Misfits appear against a backdrop of puzzle pieces. It’s an effective hint at the film to come: the focus is on people of various shapes and sizes, people who come into close contact with one another but simple don’t fit together in neat combinations. We also know from the opening that The Misfits will unfold in black-&-white. It’s a good choice for a movie that is largely bleak. It’s also effective to see Marilyn Monroe removed from the Technicolor glory of platinum hair and ruby-red lips, so that we view her less as a movieland goddess and more as a human being, slightly wounded, slightly lost.

 Monroe reportedly disliked her role, and I can understand why. Though she has never looked more beautiful on film, her role as Roslyn, the recent divorcee who’s introduced by the cowboys  to the west’s wide open spaces, is underrealized within Miller’s script. At the beginning of the story, she’s staying in Reno in search of a quicky divorce But we never completely understand her marital problems, and much of the focus is on the always welcome Thelma Ritter, who plays her crusty but kind-hearted landlady. It’s Ritter’s character, Isabelle, who has a yen for cowboys, even while she’s quite clear about the downside of their itinerant way of life.

 Soon the newly-divorced Roslyn is heading out to the wide open spaces with the rough and tumble Gaylord (Clark Gable) and his pal Guido (Wallach). Their goal is to round up and sell the mustangs, now diminishing in number, who freely roam the plains. In search of a third man to help them, they come upon Perce Howland (Montgomery Clift), a rodeo cowboy who’s seen better days. Each of the three men has a tale of woe, and Roslyn—positioned as a life force—listens sympathetically to all their problems. But she doesn’t express her own will until she’s faced with the actual mustang round-up, and comes to realize that these wild and beautiful creatures will be captured and sold for pet food. Her pained opposition to the round-up becomes a catalyst for the men to respond, each in his own way, leading to an ending that doesn’t exactly convince.

 When Clift’s character says, “I think I love you,” Roslyn answers, “You don’t know me.” But no one here truly knows anyone . . . or anything.  

 

Ana de Armas as Marilyn: Hollywood Prefers Blondes

So Cuban cutie Ana de Armas, who lit up her scenes as the nice girl in Knives Out, is now an Oscar nominee. She’s on the Best Actress list (along with superstars Cate Blanchett and Michelle Yeoh) for her portrayal of Marilyn Monroe in Blonde. With careful makeup and  a platinum dye job (as well as, I suspect, a plethora of wigs), she bears an uncanny resemblance to the late glamour queen. I’m impressed with how she’s managed to erase a Latin American accent while also taking on Monroe’s distinctively breathy speech mannerisms.

 As strong as her performance is, I tend to think the nomination is partly an apology to de Armas for having put up with so much. If Monroe suffered hugely from Hollywood’s propensity for exploiting young women, de Armas feels like a victim too. This film—based on a highly speculative 2000 bestseller by Joyce Carol Oates—seems a great deal less interested in Monroe’s soul than in her body. There are far more bare-breast shots here than in any Roger Corman flick I can think of. And the camera’s intimate glimpses of other parts of de Armas’s anatomy are often downright gynecological. Do we really need to see, in close-up, quite so much of Marilyn’s abortion? I suspect writer/director Andrew Dominik feels this is bold filmmaking, but to me it’s an exploitation film, pure and simple.

 Though Blonde  takes pains to reproduce faithfully some of Monroe’s most memorable screen moments, the focus is primarily on her private life, in which misery continually gives way to more misery. There’s little Norma Jeane’s crazily addled mother, then some not-so-nice neighbors, lecherous studio bosses, two sexually questionable sons of Hollywood who share her favors, and ultimately a parade of lovers and husbands unable to fully appreciate her. We see a jealous Joe DiMaggio (Bobby Cannavale) beat her up after eyeing her nude publicity photos, and an apparently happier union with playwright Arthur Miller (Adrien Brody) comes to an abrupt close after she suffers a miscarriage. Throughout there’s something I suspect is an Oates invention: Norma Jeane’s mysterious absentee father, sending a long string of letters to tell her he’ll be arriving soon for a much-delayed reunion.

 The single most grotesque relationship she endures is with President John F. Kennedy, lounging on a hotel bed (really?) in the midst of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Naturally, at this crucial time in the nation’s history, POTUS needs to get a load off, so Secret Service goons have hustled a shaky Marilyn from Hollywood to D.C. Soon we’re treated to an extreme close-up of poor Ana de Armas apparently performing oral sex on the presidential you-know-what. I guess it works: our country is saved from nuclear war.

 It's coincidental that I recently watched Greta Garbo in the 1930 film version of Anna Christie, a faithful adaptation of the Eugene O’Neill play about a young woman trying to leave her sordid past behind. In a 2012 documentary called Marilyn in Manhattan, the actress Ellen Burstyn recounts what she calls a “legendary” story set in the Actors Studio, where Monroe had enrolled to seriously study her craft.  Apparently she joined with stage veteran Maureen Stapleton to perform a scene from the O’Neill drama.  According to Burstyn, "Everybody who saw that says that it was not only the best work Marilyn ever did, it was some of the best work ever seen at Studio, and certainly the best interpretation of Anna Christie anybody ever saw. She . . .achieved real greatness in that scene." Too bad that a film honoring Monroe should be such an embarrassment.

 

The Witching Season

 The Witch is not an easy film to like. This 2015 release, written and directed by award-winning indie darling Robert Eggers, is atmospheric but murky. Its characters speak in a sort-of English dialect virtually impossible to understand without turning on subtitles. I’m not sure how successfully The Witch played in theatres, but I suspect it’s best watched at home, with a lot of patience. It’s mostly billed as a horror flick, but there’s hardly a plethora of jump-scares here. Instead this is best seen as a powerful mood-piece, one that calls for some philosophical probing of what’s going on.

 The Witch is set in colonial New England, in the same general time and place as the Salem Witch Trials. As a student of literature and a one-time drama kid, I’m deeply familiar with Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, the historical drama about a time in which non-conforming local women (and a few men) were tried and hanged for supposedly consorting with the Devil. Miller, who wrote his play in 1953, was most interested in the social issues raised by the trials. In an era when the Red Scare dominated headlines, when neighbor turned against neighbor in a bid to root out Communists from public life, Miller focused on social hysteria, and on the ways in which unpopular beliefs could be pinned on those without the resources to fight back. The real demonic forces at work in The Crucible are the self-serving majority who blame weaklings and outsiders for any ills affecting the community.

 The family at the center of The Witch are not publicly accused of witchcraft. But the film’s opening scene (the only one in which we see a gathering of community members) does start with a trial: William, a proud and stern man with deep Christian convictions, is being cast out of town, apparently because his rigid beliefs don’t align with those of his neighbors. The rest of the film shows William, his wife, and their children (including Anya Taylor-Joy as a young teen) struggling to make a go of it on their small, isolated farm, set against an ominous forest.

 Given the hardships of farming life and the  intense religiosity of the family (which includes the firm conviction that every human being is born a sinner), it’s not surprising that all of them believe in demonic forces. For the children, there’s both fear and fascination in the possibility that the Devil is on the loose in their vicinity. (The young twins even make a game of it, linking the dangerous-looking barnyard ram to the demon they call Black Phillip.) But the film is not merely about the superstitions of simple folk who lack our own modern outlook on life.. Within the story, diabolical things DO seem to be going on. The first is the sudden disappearance of the family’s youngest child, a mere baby, smack in the middle of a game of patty-cake.. The loss of this tiny boy, which is never given any sort of logical explanation, propels the other members of the household into a kind of spiritual frenzy, with the father desperately trying to hold his family together against tough odds, the mother nursing her personal grievances, and daughter Thomasin (Taylor-Joy) exploring rebellion against her parents and her hard-scrabble life.     

 The climax, when it comes, is startling but perhaps inevitable. There’s a cascade of tragedies, some mysterious omissions, and a final focus on Thomasin in that forest primeval. Cue the spooky music. The Witch is hardly fun to watch, but it gives you a lot to think about when it’s over.

 

The Witches of Salem: Arthur Miller and Beyond

This 1996 film was based on the Miller play.

Playwright Arthur Miller, I have learned, was not the last word on the Salem witch trials of 1692. Miller’s The Crucible is a powerful drama, the winner of Broadway’s  1953 Tony Award for best new play. In it Miller adapts some of the sordid doings of the Massachusetts Puritans while also making a covert statement about his own era, one in which McCarthyism was rampant and the lives of many good men and women were being destroyed by false accusations. Miller’s characters were actual historical figures—John Proctor, Reverend Parris, Giles Corey, Deputy-Governor Danforth, Tituba—but he did some creative reshaping of personalities and motives. In raising one character’s age and adding the aftermath of a spicy adulterous relationship to the mix, he sharpened the reasons why a restless young woman might lead others to cry out against their neighbors, ultimately sending them to their deaths on the gallows. 

Baseless accusations and over-eager justice seem to be a part of every age, which may be why The Crucible has had a long life in community theatres and high school drama departments. I have personally been part of the cast in two local productions, both times playing a little girl caught up in the madness. It was my familiarity with the play that made me so eager to read The Witches: Salem 1692, the latest tome by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and biographer Stacy Schiff. Though the full historical record remains sketchy, Stacy (whom I know as a fellow member of Biographers International Organization) has worked hard to detail the hundreds of arrests and the twenty public executions that the witch trials produced before those in power slowly acknowledged that “spectral evidence” was not exactly a reliable proof of guilt. She’s very good at taking on the historical perspective and delineating all the reasons (low social status, deviation from orthodox thinking, being on the wrong side of the political fence) why some folks turned out to be  more vulnerable than others.

One of the most striking things about the witch trials was that they were dominated by the testimony of very young women and girls. In Puritan society, such girls would be faced with a life of hard work, drab clothing, and obedience to patriarchal strictures. Stacy sees these girls (especially girls  who had lost parents to disease, death in childbirth, or Indian attacks) as desperate to add drama and color to their mundane existence. As she puts it, “History is not rich in unruly young women; with the exception of Joan of Arc and a few underage sovereigns, it would be difficult to name another historical moment so dominated by teenage virgins, traditionally a vulnerable, mute, and disenfranchised cohort.” 

In writing about witchcraft, as imagined by the Puritans and those who came before them, Stacy makes occasional reference to the witch at the center of one of America’s favorite stories, The Wizard of Oz. The Wicked Witch of the West too was taken down by a little girl, though of course we are all squarely on Dorothy’s side. Stacy’s book made me think about some less-upbeat movies in which young girls with hidden motives take on their elders. In 1961’s The  Children’s Hour, an angry schoolgirl destroys two teachers (Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine) by suggesting they are lesbian lovers. And 1956’s The Bad Seed stars blonde and pigtailed Patty McCormack as an adorable child who’ll do anything—and oppose anyone—to get what she wants. Maybe witches exist in the eye of the beholder? 

More about witchcraft in movies six months from now, when Halloween creeps closer.