The Misfits: Marilyn Monroe’s last film showed her ability to play the most painful characters | Marilyn Monroe

WWhat can you call a hat but a star quality? It was – the incalculable, incalculable thing that makes movie actresses look white – that made Marilyn Monroe one of the icons of cinema, perhaps. and a symbol. This, combined with her untimely death, which means that Monroe did not grow up on the screen, is why she endures even now, 100 years after her birth. Whether Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend Men Love Blondesto dance in Niagara or throw a sparkling conversation inside Some Like It HotMonroe seems to be at the top of the big screen – so you’d better believe she’s never been here with us.

It’s Monroe’s last picture, 1961’s The Misfits, that shows the star dead. It begins in Reno, where Monroe’s hometown Roslyn quickly divorces her estranged husband (Kevin McCarthy) before meeting a group of oddballs, among them old cowboy Gay Langland (Clark Gable) and drunken bronco rider Perce Howland (Montgomery).

Together, the motley group drinks beer and passes through Nevada bars and rodeos to the desert where, at the climax of the film, they search for the remaining mustangs in the area to build and sell dog food – these huge creatures have become, like the characters in the film, the remnants that are about to give up their jobs.

Director John Hustonfeaturing stories of self-destructive characters, giving The Misfits a sad sense of near-death, shooting in soon-to-be-destroyed, black-and-white scenes, and starring three forgettable stars. Among the most iconic talents of their generation, Gable, Monroe and Clift all had what would prove to be deadly. Only Clift would complete another film; Gable died of a heart attack just 12 days after The Misfits wrapped.

Just as they feel their time is up, the three stars of The Misfits save their lives. Gable has never felt a greater pain than Gay’s useless crying in public after his estranged children, while Clift is not as vulnerable as he is brilliantly played in the film, while Perce calls out to his mother, longing for the love and approval she cannot give.

It’s Monroe, however, who messes up her role in every finale. Roslyn wrote to Monroe as a “gift” from Arthur Miller, the screenwriter of The Misfits and Monroe is her husband. As male gifts go, it’s impressive: the part that makes Monroe a woman trying to get out of a miserable marriage (Monroe and Miller split shortly after The Misfits wrapped) is the most broken and lonely person in a movie full of them. In The Misfits, the almost down-to-earth beauty and presence that in other films has positioned Monroe as an object of desire is used to make the actress seem completely different from everyone around her – in the world, but not part of it.

Roslyn is a role, however, that Miller created for Monroe to show her a strength she hadn’t seen before as an actress. Having had enough opportunities to prove herself comfortable and timely as a comedy before making The Misfits, Monroe takes on her most important role in Roslyn, a complex and conflicted character: impulsive but fearful, innocent but world-weary, funny but eternally sad. A student of the technique, Monroe doesn’t just play the part, she goes deeper than what’s on the page; His eyes and energy in The Misfits show that he is always searching for action, in every line. Monroe never lived on screen.

The Misfits was not to be Monroe’s last film; He had to resume shooting the unfinished romcom, Something’s Gotta Give, in the summer of 1962, he was found dead in his home from an overdose, aged 36.

However, as far as final titles go, Roslyn can be seen as a worthy candidate. Created by a writer who knows Monroe well, it is a part that hides under the image of “Marilyn Monroe, the star”, and allows the actor to show that he knows what should be painful, painful.

• The Misfits is available to rent or buy on Apple TV in Australia, the UK and the US. It is also available to stream on Prime Video in the US. For more information on what to pursue in Australia, go here