‘The Misfits’ first appeared as a story, published in 1957, its title not entirely inappropriate for a man so recently declared Un-American and sentenced to prison for Contempt of Congress. Inspired by Miller's brief stay in Reno where he had gone for divorce proceedings, it tells the story of a group of men who like to think of themselves as cowboys, though to finance their time in the wilderness beyond the city line they have to work. The closest they get to living the life they seem to value is occasional forays in search of wild horses or the rodeos in which, from time to time, one of them displays skills for the most part no longer relevant to a society that has seemingly lost touch with its past and the values it embodied.

Into this world comes a vibrant young woman, Roslyn, her own life in a state of disarray but with the power to energise those around her. In the short story, she remains off-stage, a product of peripheral vision. Yet she is hardly irrelevant. She becomes the catalyst, a source of moral and spiritual reproach as well as of a vivifying energy.

In the film version, she moves to the centre, becoming the outsider who forces the men to reinspect their lives, to see themselves and what they do stripped now of the mythologies with which they have chosen to protect themselves.