Film

The Misfits

Name: The Misfits
Genre: Drama, Romance, Western
Released: 1961
Cast: Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift, Thelma Ritter, Eli Wallach

Drama

A swan song for three golden-age icons—Gable, Monroe, Clift—adrift in the Nevada desert. It's elegiac and strange, less a plot than a mood: four broken people circling each other with equal parts tenderness and self-destruction. For anyone who's felt the ache of trying to make connection work when you're all out of shape. John Huston directing actors at the end of their lines.

TMDb rating

3.5

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love films where the characters talk around their own loneliness, and where a slow, sun-bleached Nevada landscape carries as much weight as the dialogue, with a late-career ache that feels unperformed.

Skip it if you want brisk plotting, since the story drifts through long stretches of talk and waiting, and its emotional payoff depends on patience with people who are not especially likeable.

What it asks of you: It settles in for just over two hours at an unhurried pace, so give it an evening rather than a background glance, and expect a melancholy, sun-washed mood rather than easy entertainment.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Giant1956

Another sprawling American epic about men wrestling with tradition, ambition, and mortality. Rock Hudson and James Dean burn with different kinds of longing. It has the same elegiac weight and landscape-as-character feel.

But It's long—3.5 hours—and the gender politics, even by 1950s standards, will frustrate you. Some passages sag.

The Grapes of Wrath1940

Steinbeck and Ford on American dispossession and dignity. The story of people pushed to the margins, trying to survive with grace. It has The Misfits' heartbreak about a way of life ending.

But It's bleak in a way that doesn't soften. Some find the political messaging heavy-handed. Fonda's idealism might feel quaint.

Red River1948

Hawks directing Wayne and Clift in a Western about old and new, authority and rebellion. Clift's haunted intensity against Wayne's granite. Desert, horses, men at odds with themselves and each other.

But It's a traditional Western in form, which some find stiff. The romantic subplot feels bolted on. Slower than modern pacing.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Misfits

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Lightning Over Water1980

Both films are made by dying men about people and ways of life at the end. Both are elegies disguised as stories. Ray directed this looking death in the face; Huston directed The Misfits knowing he was the last chance to film these actors together.

Wim Wenders and Nicholas Ray filming Ray's final days as he dies of cancer. It's painful and intimate and formally strange—less a documentary than a duet between two filmmakers trying to hold onto something slipping away. Ray made Westerns; this is his last image-making.

But It's deliberately difficult and uncomfortable. There's no plot. Watching someone die isn't entertainment, and the film never pretends it is. Only 90 minutes but it plays much longer.

The Ballad of Little Jo1993

A revisionist Western about a woman passing as a man in the frontier, also starring Suzy Amis and David Bowe. It questions myth-making about the Old West with the same gentle subversion The Misfits manages.

But It's quieter and stranger than you might expect. Some find it didactic rather than dramatic. Limited theatrical release means it's harder to find.

Bus Stop1956

Monroe at her most luminous and vulnerable, playing a nightclub performer in a small Kansas town. Preminger directing her with unusual tenderness. It has that same sense of transient lives colliding.

But The romantic throughline is conventional. Don Murray's cowboy character can read as obnoxious. It's lighter than The Misfits—some want that, some don't.

The Hustler1961

Newman and Gleason in a film about men defined by a dying world—pool halls instead of deserts. It has the same unflinching look at masculinity in decline and connection that costs everything.

But It's primarily set indoors and urban. The pacing is deliberate and sometimes feels stalled. Some find Piper Laurie's character arc exploitative by modern standards.

Lonely are the Brave1962

Kirk Douglas as a cowboy fighting the modern world, also shot in desert landscapes with elegance and melancholy. David Miller directing a meditation on obsolescence and freedom. Smartly written, beautifully composed.

But The plot is slight and the ending is bleak to the point of nihilism. Some feel the symbolism is overwrought. Character development is minimal.

The Left Handed Gun1958

Penn's directorial debut with Paul Newman as Billy the Kid, treating the myth as psychological study. It's weird and wounded, interested in broken men making broken choices, shot with stark clarity.

But It's experimental in ways that don't always work. The pacing feels uneven. Black-and-white TV-movie aesthetic might feel cheap even if it's intentional.

Johnny Guitar1954

Nicholas Ray directing Joan Crawford and Sterling Hayden in a Western that unmakes every Western convention. It's flooded with color and strangeness and genuine feeling for its misfits.

But It's campy in ways that might overshadow the emotional core. The plot doesn't cohere neatly. Some see it as fascinating, others as a mess.

Stalker1979

Both films are about men adrift in harsh landscapes, chasing versions of freedom that destroy them. Both suggest that connection and desire are the real subject, not action. Both move with the speed of people thinking, not moving.

Tarkovsky's three-hour meditation on desire, longing, and the impossibility of salvation. A guide leads two men through a mysterious zone toward a room that grants wishes. It moves like The Misfits—slow, morally complex, interested in what people want and why they can't have it.

But It's glacially paced with long takes of empty landscapes. There is almost no plot. Subtitled. Some find it profound; others find it tedious. You have to surrender to its rhythm.

A Prophet2009

Like The Misfits, it's interested in masculine survival and the bonds men form under pressure. Both explore whether connection and integrity can coexist. Same register of quiet devastation—not heroic, just human.

Jacques Audiard's prison drama—all muscular control and quiet devastation. A young man becomes powerful but loses himself. It's a contemporary reinvention of the Western's central question: how do men survive in systems designed to break them? Urgent, beautifully shot, unforgettable.

But It's violent and unforgiving. The hero is not likable and doesn't become one. French with subtitles. Some find the pacing punishing. The ending offers no comfort.