Rent The Fugitive Kind (1960)

Magnificent Magnani. - The Fugitive Kind review by RhysH

A great cinema adaptation of Tennessee Williams's play "Orpheus Descending".

This was Marlon Brando's tenth film and he has the hesitant brooding off to a fine art but it's not so much menacing as reflecting, he even smiles once or twice.

But the film belongs to Anna Magnani, a Tennessee Williams specialist, she gives a stellar performance Every emotion is powerfully played.

Southern Gothic. - The Fugitive Kind review by Steve

Faithful version of Tennessee Williams' unsuccessful 1957 play Orpheus Descending, itself patterned on the classical myth. It is an ominous, atmospheric film full of raw symbolism. If you enjoy Williams' sad poetry and empathise with his world view, this is a treat. The southern hell is powerfully credible, and the dialogue very quotable.

 Marlon Brando delivers a stoned performance as Valentine Xavier who drifts into a southern town in thrall to racism and violence, and which conceals a guilty secret. The enigmatic hero becomes the lover of the suffering wife (Anna Magnani) of a violent, dying bigot.  

It is an allegory about purity and corruption. The capitalist world is intrinsically unholy, where human souls are bought and sold. Only the artist can be free of this contamination and become celestial. Like visionary painter Vee (Maureen Stapleton) or Val whose guitar is enscribed by the great singers of the blues.

 It is the allusions that matter. Val wears a snakeskin jacket which denotes he is a wild thing, and which he sheds at the end of the film to become a relic to inspire future disciples.  There is an abundance of abstract talk and little plot. It fared poorly, notably falling between the eras of the Beats and the Hippies, who might have embraced this cryptic parable.