Too many myths in one photo. Perfect, seductive, unforgettable but, after the epic patina, the sentimental varnish that softens us, the image built with the usual perfection by the great Elliott Erwitt is like a mortuary prayer, doomed and sad, a congress of white handkerchiefs soaked in tears, alcohol, depression, cheating, and tragedy.
The Misfits, the 1961 film by John Huston that in Spain was called rebellious lives, stealing the literal translation of the title, The Misfits, perfect to describe the two stories in contention —the one in the script about four losers without possible redemption and the one about the life of those involved, an extension of the cinematographic one, as if the cinema were a disguise for the documentary—it was the most and best photographically documented feature film in history.
Several photographers from the Magnum agency, authorized to exclusively cover the film, had free access to the shooting, in various locations in the state of Nevada, including the desert area since then baptized as Misfits Flat. It was a premonition: admitting the best witnesses to document a ceremony of living flesh and death.
In addition to Erwitt, on the recording sets, the hotel where the team stayed —the Mapes, in Reno— and during leisure excursions to canteens, casinos, and slums, there were none other than Cornell Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Bruce Davidson, Ernst Haas, Erich Hartman, Inge Morath, Dennis Stock, and Eve Arnold. No other film had witnesses of such a level. No one was innocent: they were looking for drama and found it, they smelled death and behaved like efficient gravediggers, they sensed pain and let the cameras act like discreet mourners.
The torrid temperatures that punish the desert and the old mining town of Dayton, the main location of filming —in the summer of 1960, with highs of 45º—, were not the most infernal of circumstances: Clark Gable had recently received the diagnosis of terminal lung cancer -in some scenes, the disease is noticeable in the actor's extinct voice-; Marilyn Monroe, who, for a Freudian twist, regarded Gable as the father she never had, was sunk in one of the depths of her eternally depressive melancholy; Montgomery Clift, another Saturnalia, accompanied her on the trip. the producers had a doctor on the payroll during filming to treat them and supply them with drugs; the director John Huston, with the harsh temperament, that perhaps explained his genius, did not mince words with the sick, whom he called "spoiled" children and "sissies" - he suffered from alcoholism and an incurable gambling disorder, which he fed with daily late-night excursions to Reno's blackjack tables; the screenwriter, Arthur Miller, who had married Marilyn in 1956, tried to ensure the fragility of her wife and, at her instigation, modified the script every night...
The photos of Magnum reporters do not rudely delve into the many wounds of making a film that blends with life. the misfits are not just the not-quite-fictional characters in the script, but the human beings who play them, rather, they peek into the cracks that make grief tangible. Haas displayed the graceful wild fury of mustang horses; Morath investigated the figure of Marilyn as an axis around which all the loneliness of the world revolved; Davidson kept just the right distance so as not to become emotionally invested and watch dispassionately; Arnold, one of the photographers with the greatest degree of confidence with the actress, portrayed the shadows that surrounded her light and threatened to invade him.
The movie had an epilogue with as many cracks as you'd expect. Gable died twelve days after the shooting ended, never getting to see the final cut. Marilyn and Miller divorced six days after the premiere and she died less than two years later. it was her last film, from the next engagement, Something's Got to Give (George Cukor, 1962), she was fired because she was unable to stand up and he broke the schedule time and time again.
Perhaps the fairest script for that well-photographed hell occurred on July 23, 1966, in New York, when 45-year-old Montgomery Clift uttered his last words before going to bed to die in his sleep. Minutes before, his secretary told him that The Misfits was on television and that he might want to see it.
