April 30, 2010

Film Friday: The Misfits

The Mistfits Stills
The Mistfits Stills
The Mistfits Stills
The Mistfits Stills
The Mistfits Stills
I've always adored Marilyn Monroe, which at the beginning of my "crush" came mainly from staring at Eve Arnold's portraits of her on and off the set. But when I started to watch some of her most well known films, I felt a bit let down by her trilling voice, silly scripts and comedic acting. I don't think it was her as an actress, but more the fact I'd seen a very different Marilyn when I envisioned what she'd be like. I found out recently that a lot of the portraits Eve Arnold took of Monroe were taken on the set of a film she did with Clarke Gable (I could make a whole love letter post about him, too, but 'll leave that for another day, I think!). The film is called The Misfits, made in 1961, and despite being a little skeptical I decided to watch it purely for curiosities sake.

And there on screen was the Marilyn I had envisioned whilst poring over photographs of her years ago - human, sad, funny, and of course beautiful. An honest and unnerving sort of beauty, I thought, just like I saw in the portraits. I'm only sorry I didn't discover it sooner, but in the last few weeks I've made up for that by watching it a handful of times already. It's made me want to go out to the mountains (not that we have any here) and wear sleeveless white blouses tucked into pretty high waisted jeans.

The Misfits is not only a wonderful, haunting and heart wrenching picture, but also quite an important one. One of the reasons is that it was both Marilyn and Clarke Gable's last completed film, as they both died not too long after its release. I won't go on and on about all the other reasons, but if you're at all interested I'd recommend looking here first.

Oh, and here is a piece of very specific and possibly useless advice. If you are going to watch this particular scene, with the sound turned down low then you musn't trust putting your iPod on shuffle during or afterwards. The reason being that this song might just start playing. It happened to me, and I do not recommend the experience! It turned me from (relatively!) balanced to a teary, rather damp mess. Oops!

6 comments:

  1. i love love love marilyn and what she stands for. i'm glad i found your little, i'll follow. ♥
    hehehe i am absolutely addicted to tea.. i like mine with two sugars and quite alot of milk. my friends think i'm rather strange for liking my tea this way, but still :)
    oh, & thank you very much dear <33 xxx

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  2. This is such a beautiful post.

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  3. Dear, you've got such a lovely blog in hear. I'm going to add it to my "places you should visit" list.
    I haven't seen this film but I love marilyn, so I'll give it a try.
    :)

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  4. norma jean is beautiful :)

    xx

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  5. What a wonderful post of Marilyn!!
    xoxo

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  6. Maz - Me too! And I like mine with lots of milk too, except only take sugar in spicy sorts of tea like chai. Oh, and you're welcome!

    Megg - Thank you!

    Lazzenia - That's really very sweet of you, I'll add you to mine as well. :) I hope you like the film if you watch it!

    Victoire - She is, very. :)

    Fabiola - Thank you lovey, I'm glad you liked it!

    xxxx

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