progressive politics and regressive entertainment. like peanut and butter.
June 15, 2012 Leave a comment
Here’s the trailer for The Misfits, which I reviewed this morning, a short 51 years after its release. Given the heavy hitters involved — Arthur Miller, John Huston, Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift — I’m not surprised that they focus on the celebrities involved. The actual snippets from the movie, however, look mighty cheap and cliched out of context.
June 15, 2012 Leave a comment
People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage. Intellectual myopia, often called stupidity, is no doubt a reason. But the privileged also feel that their privileges, however egregious they may seem to others, are a solemn, basic, God-given right. The sensitivity of the poor to injustice is a trivial thing compared with that of the rich.
- John Kenneth Galbraith, The Age of Uncertainty (1977)
June 15, 2012 Leave a comment
This was my first time seeing The Misfits, which was the last film for Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable. Filming finished on November 4, 1960, and Gable passed away on November 16, 1960. The movie was released on February 1, 1961, and Monroe herself died on August 5, 1962. Add into the mix a Montgomery Clift who had limped along in his life and career since a 1956 car accident, and you have a John Huston flick that gains emotional resonance from the personal lives of the stars — and that’s without even mentioning how Monroe’s husband Arthur Miller wrote the film, although their marriage was already fading by the time it was made, and they divorced on January 24, 1961. If you’re keeping track, that’s a week before The Misfits opened.
Regardless, that’s the last date I’ll mention in my remarks, I swear! Although be warned that I’m not going to avoid mentioning spoilers or pieces of the puzzle…
