Honey, we all got to go sometime, reason or no reason. Dyin's as natural as livin'. The man who's too afraid to die is too afraid to live.

No 207 - The Misfits

Director - John Huston

I was tricked. Duped even. I thought the Misfits was going to be a knockabout comedy... My hero Clark Gable and the impossible cartoon of sexiness that is Marilyn Monroe. There would be quips and sparring and maybe some hilarious mistaken identities and farcical moments.

BUT NO!

This is a serious film... with a lot of sad faces and a the two aforementioned actors cracking out their last feature length films before they die.

The Misfits is an odd film - as it seems to be one which is structured on disappointment and compromise. Nearly every character is coming out of a relationship - mostly through divorce but a couple are widows and widowers. They're then settling into this harsh cold world and trying to find any comfort to help them through. It isn't pretty. Most of the characters appear to be drunk about 90% of the time. I'd be quite interested in playing a The Misfits Drinking Game - because there is a fair amount of Whiskey getting polished off throughout.

So when a pretty little Widow like Monroe's Roslyn comes into the equation, a fierce competition happens. Everyone vies for her attention. Everyone tries to woo her. Everyone seems to get seriously fucked up when they realise they can't have her.

This is a film in which Clark Gable, Montgomery Clift and Eli Wallach are constantly backstabbing each other to get (a NEWLY DIVORCED) Marilyn Monroe into bed.... ethics are all over the shop.

The film then takes a strange existential angle. Looking at the value of life, and the way that the world has changed. Clark Gable's beat up old cow boy is tragic, a man who hasn't quite come to grips with how the world has modernised and changed around him. But all 3 men are equally as bad... they're men who's wartime experiences have seen them desensitized to life and death. They're men who refuse to see the way the world changes and who hang on to old values.

Monroe may come off as a bit hysterical throughout the film - but they need that... they need that to realise that times have changed. That you have to work. That the world is cruel. That you can't always get what you want....

Maybe I just watched this film in a glum mood (and I did) hoping to be cheered up... but that's what I got out of it. That life is a challenge, and the truly brave people are the people who rise to that challenge and be the better man.

Then you can be haggard and worn down (and hilariously called Gay) and still sleep with Marilyn Monroe....

Look how she moves! It's like Jell-O on springs. Must have some sort of built-in motor or something

No 27 – Some Like it Hot
Director – Billy Wilder

EGADS!! Almost an entire month has passed without me blogging. If I continue at this rate I’ll still be watching these films when I’m 50.
Well, I firmly believe I’ll still be watching THIS film when I’m 50. I love it. It is genius.

This is a very important film; it is the film which convinced my youngest sister not to dismiss Black and White films. It is also the film with the funniest closing line ever.

This film is most well known for the middle section in which Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis dress up as women to join an all-girl jazz band. Yet there is so much more in this film. Some of it works utterly utterly brilliantly while others feel out of place.
I’m going to begin with the out of place elements so that I can then begin spouting on about the bits of the film I love.

The film is set in the 1920’s and the opening scenes do an excellent job of showing the excess and the glamour of the illegal speakeasies. It sets up the characters perfectly (you see Curtis’ Joe introduced as a gambling, vice ridden lothario the perfect foil to the incessant worrier in Lemmon’s Jerry) and it highlights the desperation in the characters. They’re in a bit of a financial pickle. They need money.
We’re then introduced to the gangsters. The film is bookended with some proper 20’s mob action; it is this that feels unusual, and wrong in the film. Now I love 1920’s mobsters. They dress well; they have excellent morals and the skirt just on the right side of Italio-American cliché.
Spats, for example, is just a fabulous mafia villain. He is cold and chilling. Calculated and callous. He is someone that Joe and Jerry are wise to run from. However his arc feels completely tonally wrong. Every time he appears on screen it ends in a murder. His first murder is witnessed by Joe and Jerry. It is the very reason that they’re on the run and dressed as women. It is a pivotal plot point for the film and yet it feels completely out of place in such a fluffy film about love (and deception).

The film’s real triumph is the middle act – the love stories. These are so ingenious, they still hold there own 50 years on.
It all begins with a character called Sugar Kane.

My ruddy goodness… Marilyn Monroe is sexy. Tony Curtis comes out of this film as quite a good looking chap all ruggedly handsome and that but Monroe is just a hypnotic blend of wide eyed naivety and pure undiluted sex. She is involved in some particularly hot scenes (more on that later) but even when she isn’t doing anything particularly raunchy she is utterly intoxicating.
It is only natural that both Joe and Jerry become obsessed with her and Joe’s seduction of Sugar is wonderful to watch. His character, Junior – the young heir of shell oil, is meticulously designed to tick all of Sugar’s boxes. He also is pulling of a wonderful mimicry of Carey Grant’s vocal style.
The culmination of this romance is the yacht scene. Joe and Sugar are alone on a yacht and Joe (as Jr) tells the tragic story of his failed libido and how kisses leave him cold.
Cue Sugar performing ever more passionate and ever more intimate kisses. I heard Tony Curtis in an interview a couple of years ago and he said (rather brilliantly) that Marilyn Monroe would deliberately push against him and move away as they performed these kisses. It seems right; the sense of sexual teasing is very evident in the scene, which is incredibly sexy. Incredibly sexy.
I’m not surprised to learn that Tony Curtis ‘exploded’ (as he so delightfully puts it) on several takes.

So what of Jerry? Well Jerry’s alter ego Daphne catches the eye of a genuine millionaire, and the best character in the film, Osgood Fielding III. Osgood begins a very sweet, and almost innocent, seduction of Daphne with diamonds and flowers (all stolen by Joe to aid his seduction of Sugar) and dancing.
What is nicest though is that Jerry begins to genuinely fall for Osgood. He enjoys the attention, the flattery and the affection. And Osgood is a genuinely lovely character.

Joe trying to explain how marriage couldn’t work between Jerry and Osgood makes for a wonderful sequence.
You see, really, for all the gangsters, for all the shootings, for all the sultry wide eyed blondes, this is a proper traditional farce. It is all about quick costume changes and having to hide and false identities and lots of manic running around.

It ends, of course, with big reveals. Joe has to tell Sugar that he isn’t a millionaire. But by then, she doesn’t mind. Jerry has to tell Osgood that they can’t marry as he isn’t a Daphne but a Jerry.
Osgood’s response closes the film and is both a perfect representation of his character and a perfect message to close the film on.

It truly is the greatest closing line in a film.