The Fugitive Kind [Criterion Collection] [2 Discs]

Director: Sidney Lumet, José Martínez Suárez Sidney Lumet

Overview

Fugitive Kind began life as Battle of Angels, a never-produced 1939 play by a young Tennessee Williams. Nearly 20 years later, Williams refined this rough-hewn theatrical effort into Orpheus Descending, which enjoyed a respectable Broadway run. The renamed film version stars Marlon Brando as Valentine "Snakeskin" Xavier, a trouble-prone drifter who wanders into a deliciously Williamsesque Mississippi town. Here he becomes involved in the problems of alcoholic Carole Cutrere (Joanne Woodward) and unhappily married Lady Torrence (Anna Magnani) and also runs afoul of Torrence's vicious husband (Victor Jory). Sexual symbolism abounds in this tempestuous drama, which offers Brando at his most inscrutable and Magnani at her earthiest. Maureen Stapleton, in real life one of Brando's best friends and severest critics, plays an avant-garde artist.

Product Details

Release Date:	04/27/2010
UPC:	0715515057219
Original Release:	1960
Rating:	NR
Source:	Criterion Collection
Region Code:	1
Presentation:	[B&W, Wide Screen]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Mono]
Language:	English
Time:	2:01:00
Sales rank:	719

Special Features

New video interview with Lumet; Three plays by Tennessee Williams, an hour-long television presentation of one-act plays, directed by Lumet in 1958, with Ben Gazarra and Lee Grant, among others; New video program discussing the playwright's work in hollywood and The Fugitive Kind; Plus: a booklet featuring an essay by film critic David Thomson

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Marlon Brando	Actor
Anna Magnani	Actor
Joanne Woodward	Actor
Maureen Stapleton	Actor
Victor Jory	Jabe Torrance
R.G. Armstrong	Sheriff Talbott
Emory Richardson	Uncle Pleasant
Madame Spivy	Ruby Lightfoot
Sally Gracie	Dolly Hamma
Lucille Benson	Beulah Binnings
John Baragrey	David Cutrere
Ben Yaffee	Dog Hamma
Joe Brown Jr.	Pee Wee Binnings
Virgilia Chew	Nurse Porter
Frank Borgman	Gas Station Attendant
Janice Mars	Attendant's Wife
Mary Perry	Actor
Debbie Lynch	Lonely Girl
Jeanne Barr	Actor

Technical Credits

Martin Jurow	Producer
Sidney Lumet	Director
Richard Shepherd	Producer
José Martínez Suárez	Director

Scene Index

Disc #1 -- The Fugitive Kind
1. Val Xavier [8:19]
2. The Kindness of Strangers [7:16]
3. Torrance Mercantile Store [4:36]
4. "Welcome Home, Jabe" [2:57]
5. Carol, Cutrere [2:40]
6. Junkin' [3:49]
7. Local Bone Orchard [6:55]
8. Lady Torrance [7:05]
9. "A Peculiar Talker" [8:18]
10. "Fly Away, Little Bird" [9:19]
11. "The Summer You Quit Me" [4:04]
12. Jabe Calls on Val [5:13]
13. The Wine Garden [4:38]
14. A Room For Val [5:11]
15. "I Took Nobody With Me" [1:43]
16. "I See Through You, Lady" [6:18]
17. Lady's Confectionary [8:57]
18. The Sheriff Questions Val [4:11]
19. Night of the Opening [8:09]
20. Little Fig Tree [5:29]
21. Vigilantes [2:38]
22. "The Fugitive Kind" [3:45]
Disc #2 -- Fugitive Kind
1. Training Ground [5:09]
2. "My Fourth Movie" [3:28]
3. Marlon Brando [7:22]
4. Kaufman's Lighting [2:44]
5. A Credible Love Story [2:38]
6. Woodward and Stapleton [5:51]
1. Introduction [1:56]
2. A Cinematic Playwright [3:39]
3. One Success After Another [5:03]
4. Angels and Orpheus [3:04]
5. A Sidney Lumet Film [8:28]
6. Realism Over Mythology [4:52]
1. Tennessee Williams [1:18]
2. Moony's Kid Don't Cry [19:34]
3. The Last of My Solid Gold Watches [17:26]
4. This Property is Condemned [13:46]
5. Presented By Kraft [2:55]

Menu

Disc #1 -- The Fugitive Kind
   Play the Movie!
   Chapters!
      Color Bars
Disc #2 -- Fugitive Kind
   Sidney Lumet
      Play
      Index
   Hollywood's Tennessee and the Fugitive Kind
      Play
      Index
   Three Plays By Tennessee Williams
      Play
      Index

Editorial Reviews

The Fugitive Kind finds Marlon Brando at his slush-mouthed best, in a landscape that's pure Tennessee Williams -- appropriate, since the celebrated playwright wrote the screenplay. Three years after his breakthrough direction of Twelve Angry Men (1957), Sidney Lumet helms this involving tale of a reforming petty criminal (Brando) who quickly runs afoul of the local citizenry in rural Mississippi, in spite of his best efforts to abide by the law. In the course of spouting world-weary poetic blither, Brando's Xavier Valentine catches the attention of a crass wild child (Joanne Woodward) and a repressed convenience store owner (Anna Magnani). The Fugitive Kind confounds expectations by exploring a romantic relationship between Brando and the older Magnani, rather than the blonde, age-appropriate Woodward; though true to form for Brando characters, the relationship is all argument verging on fisticuffs. Magnani's performance is the soul of the picture, as her character's years of self-abnegating emotional baggage come to the fore with tortured immediacy. In relatively little screen time, Victory Jory plumbs the depths of jealousy and racism as Magnani's domineering husband, whose seething dictatorship over his dominion far outstretches the fragility of his bedridden body. The Fugitive Kind may be a lesser picture in the careers of those involved, but that's more an indication of the richness of those careers than a knock on this worthy morality play.

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