Why Marilyn Monroe's Last Completed Movie is Still Relevant Today

Westerns and toxic masculinity go hand in hand. Also, gore, violence, and flat male characters who’re too rigid in their ideals to change.

So, when John Huston’s The Misfits was released in 1961, it was quite a shocker. Nobody had seen anything like that in the genre before.

The narrative is as lucid as it can get. A newly divorced gorgeous blonde and three cowboys who’re head over heels for her. It makes you think, why are we still talking about this film about 65 years later?

Is it only because it was both Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable’s last movie? Or, because it features Huston’s masterful direction? Or because Arthur Miller’s adaptation of his own short story painfully imitates his wife, Monroe, through Roslyn’s arc? Well, yes, but also no.

The Misfits have a few qualities that I definitely think won’t be irrelevant anytime soon.

In this article, let’s analyze them and see why The Misfits stood the test of time, better than other Westerns, and is all the more relevant now than ever.

Why The Misfits Is Sort of an “Eastern Western”

The main difference between a traditional Western and The Misfits lies not in their visual treatments but in their characters, their arcs, and themes.

Let’s see how.

1. Themes

While The Misfits is set against a quintessential Western backdrop, it doesn’t deal with traditional Western themes.

Instead, The Misfits is an exploration of loneliness, isolation, trauma, and humanity while challenging conventional ideas of masculinity. While the story begins in Reno, we’re quickly transported to the frontier when Roslyn goes to live with Guido at a cabin in the wild west, and the other two cowboys follow in hopes of winning her.

Unlike traditional Westerns, there are no shootouts, bloodshed, or good versus bad. The narrative centers on individuals who are deeply flawed and weighed down by their emotional baggage—all set to redeem themselves over the course of the story.

2. Characters and Their Arcs

All five primary characters in The Misfits come from different walks of life and have dark pasts.

Roslyn is an ex-exotic dancer who whiles away her time in Reno with no real purpose left in her life after the divorce. She is lonely, and her beauty and sex appeal only make her life harder. While there was a time she thoroughly enjoyed the male attention, now it’s become a curse for her.

Roslyn’s three suitors, Guido, Langland, and Howland, have their own ghosts of the past. Guido lives in grief over the loss of his wife, who died of pregnancy complications because he couldn’t take her to the hospital in time. Langland is battling with aging and loneliness. Howland is a broken-down rodeo rider.

For the men, Roslyn is the last best thing that could happen to them, and so they relentlessly pursue her.

The Lack of Violence

What distinguishes The Misfits from its peers in the genre is the absence of violence and gore in the narrative. The story concentrates on the vanishing frontiers and the emotional turmoil of the various characters, rather than on violence-driven grandeur and masculinity through themes of revenge and good vs. bad.

The characters are tough and yet sensitive in the most unexpected moments, ready to change themselves, which they ultimately do, without a gun being pointed at their heads.

Also, by allowing the different romantic arcs to take center stage, Huston gives us enough space to form a real connection with the characters. When Langland and Roslyn unite at the end of the movie, it leaves us with a lingering happiness.

In the scene where Roslyn loses her mind when she learns that Langland and Guido are going to sell the horses to a slaughterhouse, including the mare, which is pregnant with a foal, she screams at the “three sweet damned men,” constantly yelling that she is done with them.

She says, “You’re only happy when you can see something die!”

This shows how Huston subverts traditional Western themes and storytelling to give you The Misfits.

Not many know that The Misfits is technically not Monroe’s last movie, as she was working on another film after this, Something’s Got to Give, which was ultimately shelved due to her untimely demise.

So that makes The Misfits her last movie that was released.

While The Misfits had garnered all the attention of the world for the wrong reasons, such as chaotic production, Monroe’s divorce from Miller, and Gable’s heart attack two days after filming ended, anyone who’s watched the movie knows that it’s a Huston masterpiece.

Have you watched The Misfits yet?