I first saw the movie The Misfits back in the late 1980's. The 1961 film immediately became one of my all time favorites. The cable channel TCM played the movie last night and it was the first time I watched it in probably over ten years. It's one of the saddest movies I've ever seen- and it's sad on a couple of different levels. The story itself is about a quartet of souls who haven't so much lost their way as lost their place in the world. The Misfits also has the distinction of being Clark Gable's last movie and the last movie Marilyn Monroe finished filming. Marilyn gives a sterling performance both vulnerable and the strong moral center of the story. I fell in love with Marilyn the first time I saw the movie. By all accounts she was in a rapidly deteriorating condition during the filming. Yet she's able to give such a convincing performance. The thing that made me fall for her was her character's sadness over the mistreatment and killing of animals. That someone could get so upset over the killing of a rabbit seemed odd to me the first time I watched The Misfits. I've reached a place in my own life where I can read news story after news story about human tragedy and death and I barely blink an eye. But whenever I read a story about an animal being hurt or killed I tear up. I don't know if that's progress or a slide down into misfitisdom.
Neither - we are so immune to human tragedy because much of the time it is inflicted by human(s) to human(s). With mistreatment of animals, it is almost always humans to animals who so much more helpless and really have no chance against the more powerful humans. It is the compassion factor at play.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Momo completely. I have never been able to watch The Misfits all the way through. It just makes me so sad that I can't stand it.
ReplyDeleteI have never seen that movie. I think I will add it to my Netflix queue.
ReplyDeleteProps to MoMo she put it purrfectly. Animals are fairly helpless against humans and it's the helplessness which is so saddening. That one species would so lord it's power over the other in such a display is well...digusting.
ReplyDeleteOn a side note "Her" Kevin Slowey is coming to pitch for the Miracle on Monday on a rehab assignment, so need I tell you that she's been walk around on air since she found out?
I've always been that way. As a child, I hated watching westerns. Everytime a horse would get killed in a film, I would get so upset and cry...I could have cared less about the humans in the films, as sad as that sounds...to this day, animals still touch me that way. I think it like Momo said, its the difference between someone having a chance and someone having no chance or choice...
ReplyDeleteIt's a great movie, we caught it on TV the other day too! Our mommy agrees, we also get tearful and sad about hearing about the mistreatment of animals.
ReplyDeleteI had to walk out of a movie once about a pair of young sibling tigers separated when their mother is killed. I think one went to a good home and the other was badly treated. I think it was a kid's movie and the tigers were going to get back together in a good place, but the bad stuff was just too close to what I see in my rescue work.
ReplyDelete