The Misfits

by Lukas Kendall

Today's column is one of those short things that comes out of nowhere in lieu of something topical. I just saw The Misfits at the local revival theater, walking distance from the FSM office -- by sheer chance it was playing, and I had been listening to Rykodisc's new CD all day. Besides the fact that this may be my favorite Alex North score, it's a resonant movie that makes you realize that movies used to be good and mean something.

For one thing, it's by a real writer, playwright Arthur Miller, and a real director, John Huston. It's a character study, but not like Hurly Burly, a movie which I liked but which was nevertheless filled to an annoying degree with actor-wonk monologues. It's in black and white and it doesn't have any "bad guys."

The Misfits is not the greatest movie ever made, and although it has memorable turns of phrase it's not end-to-end poetry. But it is a provocative study of beauty, and living, and men and women. I don't even want to share anything more than superficial reactions to it, because they're too personal. The movie is about characters played by Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift, Eli Wallach and Thelma Ritter -- sadsacks and "misfits" who come together and in the end participate in a mustang round-up. (I hate it when people refer to actors as if they're the characters, i.e. "Harrison Ford shoots him." It's the character played by Harrison Ford who shoots someone.)

I was feeling sad this afternoon, basically from having to deal with tiresome emails about Star Wars, and so this movie struck a chord. Besides the fact that it's good, and thought-provoking, it's emotionally sustaining, and not the opposite. Too many times I've gone home after work and just had the life sucked out of me by watching TV... baseball highlights are one thing, but then, flipping around the tube, it's such garbage and so unfulfilling. I swear, I'll come home pooped and TV will make me not only still tired, but antsy, aggravated and all-around fatigued. In contrast, The Misfits actually was fulfilling.

Also, a word of explanation about Alex North. There are certain composers who specialize in more abstract, dissonant music to whom many collectors never warm up: North, Jerry Fielding, and even Jerry Goldsmith at his most modern. But even moreso than Fielding, North's music is so pointillistic that it threatens to slide off the movie -- it seems too intellectual for its own good. The thing about North was that he was not great at scoring crap. Some composers are -- Goldsmith is just as good at crap as he is at Chinatown. John Williams, curiously, specialized almost exclusively in crap until he scored big-budget, beautifully done versions of same for his most famous directors. I mean, at the time of The Sand Pebbles, Williams was scoring things like A Guide for the Married Man.

But back to North, his music is so good that he needs the movie to be equally ambitious -- not experimental-ambitious, but solid enough so that he didn't have to explain the entire movie. He did enough of these "A" projects that he -- and not Morricone, or any other composer to date -- was granted the lifetime achievement Oscar in the mid-'80s. The Misfits fits this bill. The Misfits is my favorite of his works because it has the jazzy, sweetly melodic style he did so well, plus the dissonant, modernist side -- the virtual "ballet" he wrote for the mustang round-up.

Rykodisc's CD of The Misfits, brilliantly assembled by MGM's Chris Neel from North's personal tapes of the score, is one of my favorite albums of the last 12 months. I know everyone has something to say about Star Wars, but take the time to hear something like The Misfits, not because I actually care what you listen to or not, but because it's good and maybe you'll find it rewarding, as I have.

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