pauletterich-la
Based on the play "Orpheus Descending" by Tennessee Williams directed by Sidney Lumet with an exceptional cast: Marlon Brando, Anna Magnani, Joanne Woodward, Maureen Stapleton and Victor Jory. I saw it for the first time when I was still in my teens and I had an opaque, sticky memory of the film so when somebody suggested to see it on DVD I knew we were in for an opaque, sticky evening but, as it happens, I was dead wrong. "The Fugitive Kind" is riveting with an opening monologue by Brando that is astonishing. A 1960 Brando when he had still, I imagine. hopes to be the actor, the man he wanted to be. There is an animal innocence in his eyes in his moves. The magnificent Magnani, who learned her lines phonetically because she didn't know English presented Brando with a challenge as an actress and as a woman. I hear it wasn't pretty but the result is a feast for the eyes and the ears. The film may not be perfect but I don't think the original material was either so what we got here is a unique opportunity to see this enormous artists giving their whole. That alone makes it a collectors item.
Red-125
The Fugitive Kind (1960) was directed by Sidney Lumet. The movie is adapted from the play, "Orpheus Descending," by Tennessee Williams who also was co-writer of the script.In the classic tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, Orpheus is a musician, whose young bride Eurydice dies. Orpheus descends to the Underworld, where his music is so wonderful that he is allowed to bring Eurydice back from the dead. However, just as he is about to succeed, the plan fails, and Eurydice remains in the Underworld. Shortly afterward, Orpheus himself is killed.In the movie, Marlon Brando plays Valentine 'Snakeskin' Xavier, who is a musician, and who is symbolically Orpheus. Val arrives in a small town in the deep South, which, at the time, could certainly serve as a symbol of the Underworld. Anna Magnani plays an Italian shopkeeper, Lady Torrance, who is married to Jabe Torrance, a harsh, evil man, who is fatally ill. She could be Eurydice, although Williams gives us a second lost soul, Joanne Woodward as Carol Cutrere, a rich, beautiful young alcoholic. Woodward is always drunk, and always seductive. I think Williams perceived her as a life force, even if the life she was leading was self-destructive. (I don't see where she fits into the Orpheus and Eurydice tale, but there she is every so often--drunk and unable to drive home because, "The took away my license again.")According to IMDb, Brandon is considered the greatest film actor of the 20th Century. Maybe, maybe not. By the time this film was shot, he was 36, and his face had lost the sharp angles it had had in his earlier great films. He is treated in the film as a man no woman could resist, and maybe that was true in small-town Mississippi, but it was a stretch for me. Brando's great achievement was Method realism, and it didn't work for me in his film.The opening scene shows Val in court, being lectured by a judge. We can't see the judge-- the scene is shot from his POV. We see Brando mumbling his way through the questioning. "Yeah, I had to hock my guitar. I couldn't bear to think of my guitar being in hock, so I kinda broke up the place." "As soon as I get my guitar out of hock, I'm leaving New Orleans." I found the scene painful.The question is, Why see the picture at all? See it for Magnani. Magnani plays a middle-aged woman, who falls in love with Brando, as expected. A reasonable choice for her under the circumstances, but not a wise one. Magnani was often compared to Sohia Loren. They were both Italian, and both beautiful, but that's where the similarity ends. Loren was impossibly beautiful. Magnanii had a beauty that was not impossible. You can imagine her as someone you might encounter, even at the in a mercantile store in the deep South. Her acting was superb. She was a strong person, but the circumstances forced her to be far less than she could have been.Some films from 1960 appear as alive as they did when they were made. The Fugitive Kind feels dated--almost a classic movie whose time has passed. However, it's worth seeing for Magnani's outstanding, exactly right, performance. The film is mostly shot indoors, and will work on DVD. It's a part of movie history, and is worth seeing, but don't expect a timeless masterpiece.Note: Look for Maureen Stapleton as Vee Talbot, who is so downtrodden by her sheriff husband that she has left the real world and escaped into her own world of painting.Note: If you want to see the Orpheus legend truly captured on film, watch Black Orpheus, set in Brazil during Carnival. It's adheres to the Orpheus legend much more closely, and you care more for the characters.
museumofdave
When I first saw this film during it's initial release in 1959, I was magnetized by the odd chemistry between the moody, semi-articulate Marlon Brando in his snake-skin jacket and the searching intensity of Anna Magnani, playing the frustrated wife of sweaty Victor Jory, a grinning, sweating mask of Death, incapacitated upstairs. There was nothing quite like the mixture of poetic symbolism, the fevered acting styles from the cast, and the evocation of a dusty little Southern town.The critics at the time didn't know what to make of this film, probably looking for the happy predictability of the usual 1950's time-passer, and it went largely ignored, certainly by the public, and pretty much by everyone else. As time has passed, the intensity of contributions from everyone on the set is palpable, especially the wonderful lighting effects that make this oddball Tennessee Williams play (on stage it was Orpheus Descending) especially cinematic. It is a distinctive and fascinating portrait of the oddball strain in a changing nation and rich with some memorable encounters. How can you not want to go "jukin" with Joanne Woodward, looking as she does like Blanche Dubois after she escaped the asylum? I think the film only gets better with time, but would caution those who want realism or expect sweet resolutions to stay away from the film. It is vintage Tennessee Williams, with life's fragile losers the focus, the tale heavy with symbolism, the climax certainly not a cheerer-upper.
