The Fugitive Kind, 1960, as Val Xavier
Cast: Anna Magnani, Joanne Woodward, Victor Jory
Director: Sidney Lumet
Rating
Factoid
– Ten years after his triumph in A Streetcar Named Desire, Brando agreed to star in another Tennessee Williams drama, but one of greatly inferior quality.
– Taken from Williams’ play Orpheus Descending, The Fugitive Kind is about an enigmatic, sexy wanderer, Val Xavier (Brando), whose conspicuous presence in a small Southern town disrupts the lives of two women: Lady Torrence (Magnani), a sexually repressed earth mother whose husband is terminally ill, and Carol (Woodward), an alcoholic young tramp.
– By agreeing to star in The Fugitive Kind, Brando became the first actor in Hollywood history to be paid $1 million for his services. The Fugitive Kind may have been financially rewarding for Brando – but it did nothing to bolster Brando’s career.
– There was a lot of tension between Brando and Magnani during the filming – they clashed during the filming of the movie and theirs was an unhappy off-screen relationship.
– There is very little that can be said about this movie, personally, one of the least favorite of Brando’s movies – not sure why he took up this project 😉
– The movie opened in the fall of 1961, it was greeted with harsh reviews. Most critics complained that the three Oscar-winning performers (Magnani and Woodward were recent winners of the award) should have chosen better material.
Quotes from the movie
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Synopsis:
Valentine Xavier (Marlon Brando) is an “entertainer” in New Orleans – he plays a guitar given to him by Leadbelly – but when he runs afoul of the law one too many times, he vows to quit the scene and start anew elsewhere. A rainstorm leaves him stranded in a small southern town somewhere between New Orleans and Memphis, and he decides to find a job there. While his past comes to haunt him in the form of local girl Carol Cutere, who’s not really allowed anywhere in the town, Xavier’s life also becomes inextricably linked with his boss’ wife (Anna Magnani), the volatile Lady, whose weary, smoldering bitterness dates from the time the town rose up and destroyed her father’s vineyard because he sold alcohol to an African American.
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