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 tale full of raw symbolism. For those who enjoy Williams' sad poetry and empathise with his world view, this is a treat. And the dialogue is very quotable.

Marlon Brando delivers a stoned performance as a beautiful nonconformist who blows into a southern town in thrall to racism and violence, and which conceals a guilty secret. The drifter 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 the visionary painter (Maureen Stapleton) or the newcomer, a free spirit whose guitar is inscribed by the great singers of the blues.

 It is the imagery that matters. The hero wears a snakeskin jacket which denotes he is a wild thing, and which he sheds at the end to become a relic that inspires future disciples.  There is an abundance of abstract talk and little plot. It fared poorly, falling between the eras of the Beats and the Hippies, who may have embraced this cryptic parable.