Playing a recently-divorced woman in Reno, Nevada who becomes friends with two cowboys and a rascally pilot, Marilyn Monroe is clothed (or nearly clothed) throughout the film but has never seemed more naked and vulnerable. Although she shares some very tender scenes with Clark Gable (and with wonderful Thelma Ritter as her landlady), Monroe's character is tough to get a grip on; she skitters through the picture like a tremulous breeze, fidgety about her feelings, desperate to be a mother-hen to this pack of misfits, though there's nothing concrete about this woman (she's like a mirage). The movie's best scenes are mostly at the beginning, before Montgomery Clift enters as a fragile rodeo rider and slows things way down. Screenwriter Arthur Miller provides pages of quotable dialogue, though he may have fashioned his slim, wayward plot around all the chatter. As a result, "The Misfits" is appropriately aimless and disillusioned, with a clever ear for how unshackled folks talk, yet it is extremely draggy. Director John Huston, who probably had some understanding of the material, captures several incredible sequences yet he doesn't seem certain of how to make an entertainment out of all this. **1/2 from ****
Review of The Misfits
