The Fugitive Kind *** (1960, Marlon Brando, Joanne Woodward, Anna Magnani) – Classic Movie Review 6948

‘With a guitar and a snakeskin jacket he drifted out of the rain… into the lives of these two women…’ Tennessee Williams’s second-level 1957 tragic play Orpheus Descending gets the extravagant full-monty emoting it needs from top cast Marlon Brando as Val Xavier a trouble-magnet Southern drifter and Anna Magnani and Joanne Woodward as Lady Torrance and Carol Cutrere, the women whose company he drifts into in a Mississippi small town.

But, despite all the showy histrionics and director Sidney Lumet’s expertise and success with stage-to-film transfers, the 1960 The Fugitive Kind is a strangely static, often flat movie that drifts and gets into trouble like its hero over its two-hour running time.

Brando’s guitar-playing hero Val [Valentine ‘Snakeskin’ Xavier] arrives at Mississippi’s Two Rivers and has an affair with Magnani’s frustrated middle-aged lady Lady Torrance, who is married to sadistic, dying elderly husband Jabe (Victor Jory), as well as with Woodward’s rich young, sex-crazed, dipsomaniac Carol, until Sheriff Jordan Talbott (R G Armstrong) gives him the big heave ho.

Nevertheless, despite its drawbacks and lack of big reputation, The Fugitive Kind is still well worth a look for the special iconic cast and for the steamy piece, especially as the screenplay is co-written by Williams himself (with Meade Roberts).

Also in the cast are Maureen Stapleton, Emory Richardson, Sally Gracie, Lucille Benson, John Baragrey, Ben Yaffee and Joe Brown Jr.

The Fugitive Kind is directed by Sidney Lumet, runs 119 minutes, is a production by Pennebaker and Jurow-Shepherd, is released by United Artists, is written by Tennessee Williams and Meade Roberts, is shot in black and white by Boris Kaufman, is produced by Martin Jurow and Richard A Shepherd, is scored by Kenyon Hopkins, and is designed by Richard Sylbert.

Milton, New York.

Set in the American Deep South, it was filmed in Milton, New York (named after the poet).

It was re-shot as a TV movie in 1990 under its original title with Vanessa Redgrave.

With this little item, co-produced by his own company Pennebaker, Brando became the first movie star to be paid $1 million.

Williams wrote the play for Brando and Magnani but neither wanted to do it on stage.

The Criterion Collection released a two-disc DVD edition in April 2010.

The Arclight Theatre in New York staged a production in 2010 starring Michael Brando, Marlon’s grandson, using the edited film version of the text. The 1957 Orpheus Descending is a revision of Williams’s unproduced 1940 play Battle of Angels. Williams wrote the role of Myra Torrance for Tallulah Bankhead, but she turned it down: ‘The play is impossible, darling, but sit down and have a drink with me.’

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6948

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com