Well, if it's directed by John Huston and has a cast that includes Gable, Monroe, Clift, Wallach, and Thelma Ritter, it can't be all bad -- and it isn't.
There are a couple of outstanding scenes in this movie. One involves all the men getting drunk and piling into a car with Marilyn Monroe. Gable and Clift fall asleep in the back seat, leaving the besotted Wallach to drive them home at 90 miles an hour, rambling on about how many people, horses, and dishes he destroyed while bombing nine European cities during the war, while a frantic Monroe sympathizes with him and begs him to slow down.
They arrive at Gable's and Wallach's dilapidated rural homestead. The trip from Reno, Nevada, has taken some time. Now, in an ordinary movie, the men would be sober and grumpy as they wake up and tumble out of the station wagon. Instead, Huston has them still drunk. It's a hilarious and very masculine moment as Clift staggers around tearing the bandages from his half-shattered skull, demanding to know what they are, challenging the others and shouting, "You put me at a DISADVANTAGE?" He's stumbling over boards and falling down and Gable is growling with laughter and throwing mock punches at him from ten feet away. I imagine the writer, Arthur Miller, to whose wife, Marilyn, this is a paean, wrote the scene but Huston really put it together. Miller gives her some good lines though. In the blazing stillness of the desert, Marilyn remarks, "It's so quiet out here. You can hear your clothes against your skin."
Another memorable scene has Marilyn in a polka-dot dress whanging away at a paddle ball in a Reno saloon while all those part of her that must shake during such an exercise jiggle away.
The most powerful scene, and it's rather long, appears at the end. The boys have taken Marilyn out to the desert to watch them rope wild mustangs that will be sold to the canneries for dog and cat food. The first time I saw this, in a theater, I was impressed, but this time around I found it a bit more than just a dramatic action scene.
Instead of the hundreds of ponies that used to roam the highlands, the band is now only able to round up half a dozen, including a mare and her year-old foal, and the stallion who runs the remuda. Shocked and repelled, the nurturant Marilyn runs away and disembowels the men in long shot. Gable fights the stallion to a point of mutual exhaustion and then releases the creature and his small brood.
You can't rope a dream. The mustangs represented his only real opportunity of avoiding wage work and having to take orders from someone else. For Gable, the problem isn't horses. It's history passing him by, and it's age too. The ground has shifted under his feet. Clift has already accepted this, though he has his own demons to contend with. Wallach is not yet ready to give up and screams insults at the others as they drive off and leave him behind.
Gable's fate is to settle down and do wage work while living with and eventually marrying Marilyn Monroe. Now, that's my kind of surrender.
I doubt that the film would be as good as it is without Huston's having directed it. (As it is, there are some talky moments and author Miller has made some things too explicit and some exchanges too wordy.) But, just for example, who else would have staged that climactic scene in which Monroe excoriates the men for their brutality so that she is seen about fifty yards away and can barely be heard? It's not really a tragic tale. There's a good deal of comedy in it, the characters are user friendly, and, to tell the truth, all that cowboy masculinity, hairy and angular, needed a touch of tender-minded femininity. Gable proves adaptable and if he doesn't lead the ideal life he'd always intended -- well, who does? And Wallach, who refuses to change, will grow old and bitter.
There are a couple of outstanding scenes in this movie. One involves all the men getting drunk and piling into a car with Marilyn Monroe. Gable and Clift fall asleep in the back seat, leaving the besotted Wallach to drive them home at 90 miles an hour, rambling on about how many people, horses, and dishes he destroyed while bombing nine European cities during the war, while a frantic Monroe sympathizes with him and begs him to slow down.
They arrive at Gable's and Wallach's dilapidated rural homestead. The trip from Reno, Nevada, has taken some time. Now, in an ordinary movie, the men would be sober and grumpy as they wake up and tumble out of the station wagon. Instead, Huston has them still drunk. It's a hilarious and very masculine moment as Clift staggers around tearing the bandages from his half-shattered skull, demanding to know what they are, challenging the others and shouting, "You put me at a DISADVANTAGE?" He's stumbling over boards and falling down and Gable is growling with laughter and throwing mock punches at him from ten feet away. I imagine the writer, Arthur Miller, to whose wife, Marilyn, this is a paean, wrote the scene but Huston really put it together. Miller gives her some good lines though. In the blazing stillness of the desert, Marilyn remarks, "It's so quiet out here. You can hear your clothes against your skin."
Another memorable scene has Marilyn in a polka-dot dress whanging away at a paddle ball in a Reno saloon while all those part of her that must shake during such an exercise jiggle away.
The most powerful scene, and it's rather long, appears at the end. The boys have taken Marilyn out to the desert to watch them rope wild mustangs that will be sold to the canneries for dog and cat food. The first time I saw this, in a theater, I was impressed, but this time around I found it a bit more than just a dramatic action scene.
Instead of the hundreds of ponies that used to roam the highlands, the band is now only able to round up half a dozen, including a mare and her year-old foal, and the stallion who runs the remuda. Shocked and repelled, the nurturant Marilyn runs away and disembowels the men in long shot. Gable fights the stallion to a point of mutual exhaustion and then releases the creature and his small brood.
You can't rope a dream. The mustangs represented his only real opportunity of avoiding wage work and having to take orders from someone else. For Gable, the problem isn't horses. It's history passing him by, and it's age too. The ground has shifted under his feet. Clift has already accepted this, though he has his own demons to contend with. Wallach is not yet ready to give up and screams insults at the others as they drive off and leave him behind.
Gable's fate is to settle down and do wage work while living with and eventually marrying Marilyn Monroe. Now, that's my kind of surrender.
I doubt that the film would be as good as it is without Huston's having directed it. (As it is, there are some talky moments and author Miller has made some things too explicit and some exchanges too wordy.) But, just for example, who else would have staged that climactic scene in which Monroe excoriates the men for their brutality so that she is seen about fifty yards away and can barely be heard? It's not really a tragic tale. There's a good deal of comedy in it, the characters are user friendly, and, to tell the truth, all that cowboy masculinity, hairy and angular, needed a touch of tender-minded femininity. Gable proves adaptable and if he doesn't lead the ideal life he'd always intended -- well, who does? And Wallach, who refuses to change, will grow old and bitter.