Today’s meme, “Favorite Black and White Film” is one of the silly ones that lead me to believe that this series was created for people with a slightly different relationship with movies than I have. Because asking me to name my favorite black and white film is akin to querying what movie I like best in English (well, nearly). I’ve decided instead to take it more literally and discuss a film that makes the best use of the medium itself, which makes me think of the films of the late fifties and early sixties, when there was a gorgeous crispness and contrast to the B&W, and it stretched gloriously across the screen in 1.66 : 1 ratio.

At the time, a number of studios had a policy that only musicals and comedies were filmed in color; “serious” films were done in black and white. Orson Welles once said: “Black and White is the actor’s friend. All performances are better in black and white. Name me a great performance in color.” There’s something to be said for that, as there is a starkness to it which leaves nothing to get in the way of what the performer is trying to convey. But it does something for some scenery too, as I’m not sure the desert has ever been shot more beautifully than by John Huston in today’s topic, and I don’t think you can find more bare and real performances than in The Misfits.

The movie takes place in and around Reno, Nevada and spends a long stretch out in the flat of a dry lake-bed, the wide, open space a parallel to the solitude of each who inhabit it. Sensitive Rosalyn has come to Reno for a divorce, and Isabelle (the wonderful Thelma Ritter) explains to her that she’s come to the right place: “The Leave It state. Ya got money you want to gamble? Leave it here. You got a wife you want to get rid of? Get rid of her here. Extra atom bomb you don’t need? Blow it up here. Nobody’s gonna mind in the slightest.”

That’s about the size of it. The Misfits is about rejects; people with nowhere to go, whose worlds are shrinking and whose purposes in life are becoming obsolete. The aging cowboy, the self-destructive rodeo star, and the widower veteran all crowd around Rosalyn, who never met anything with a pulse she didn’t want to save. The actual “Misfits” themselves are the bands of wild mustangs that run in the desert, which have been decimated by the practice of rounding them up to sell for dog food. The symbolism is so thick you can taste it in the air.

The casting is almost too on the nose. The film was written by Arthur Miller, whose marriage to Marilyn Monroe fell apart over the course of filming, and it’s fascinating to see what the character she plays says about her; it’s an incredibly empathetic look at a woman for whom the hopes of all men are far too much of a burden. But icons are up for sale here, because Clark Gable allowed Rhett Butler to die an ignoble death in this film, and his performance is nothing short of brave. Montgomery Clift is, as always, brilliant and as wide-open as an exposed nerve. The Misfits was famously the last finished film for both Gable and Monroe. Clift, whom Monroe described as “the only person I know who is in worse shape than I am,” was dead less than six years later.

It’s film history’s most beloved swan-song, and the goodbye it waves to the old west, to a way of life, and to the Golden Age of Film itself would not be the same in color. The Coen Brothers said, “there’s something hyper-real” about Black and White. The reality of The Misfits is tragically beautiful and glorious to witness.

“I just gotta find another way to feel alive, that’s all… if there is one anymore.”