The Fugitive Kind

Marlon Brando is Valentine Xavier, a sensitive loner and carousing musician who—dressed in a snakeskin jacket and hauling a guitar autographed by Leadbelly—drifts into a Mississippi backwater town full of drunks and bullies in this stylized 1959 screen adaptation of Tennessee Williams' play Orpheus Descending, directed by Sidney Lumet. Anna Magnani costars as Lady, the wife of bedridden tyrant Jabe Torrance (Victor Jory), who owns the local mercantile store. An Italian immigrant (who witnessed her father's killing by masked thugs), Lady briefly escapes her misery in Xavier's arms. Highly theatrical and dripping with gothic atmosphere, The Fugitive Kind is hardly a study in realism, while the love story never truly convinces (in part because of a disconnect in performance styles, with Brando's tics and mumbles and heavy pauses out of sync with Magnani's outgoing street-diva approach). But this is still a mesmerizing film, with Brando delivering perhaps the definitive Method performance as the haunted Xavier, revealing a vulnerable soul behind the tough exterior. Joanne Woodward is equally riveting as Carol, a slumming socialite who turns every emotion and impulse into a grand statement, while Maureen Stapleton is heartbreaking as Vee, a fragile artist. DVD extras include the archival production Three Plays by Tennessee Williams (a program of one-act plays directed by Lumet for TV in 1958), a new video interview with Lumet, an original documentary on Williams' work in Hollywood, and a booklet with an essay by film critic David Thomson. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)