Film Review
Almost a decade after
A Streetcar Named Desire
(1951), the film that made him an overnight star, Marlon Brando was
coaxed into starring in another film adaptation of a Tennessee Williams
play,
Orpheus Descending.
Retitled
The Fugitive Kind,
Williams' play offers Brando another superb character role, in the form
of the guitar-playing drifter Val Xavier, and the actor doesn't
disappoint, turning in another of his hypnotic portrayals of a loner
adrift in a world that rejects and disgusts him. This time Brando
is partnered with Anna Magnani, the famous diva of Italian neo-realism,
who gives a performance of comparable power as the 'older woman' who is
tainted by misfortune and who ends up looking like a refugee from a
Greek tragedy. It is an unlikely pairing but somehow Brando's
brooding introspection makes an effective contrast with Magnani's
penchant for histrionic self-immolation, and it is hard not to be completely
mesmerised by the scenes in which these two legendary actors spark off
one another with an intensity and ferocity that almost hurts.
In his direction of the film, Sidney Lumet shows perhaps a little too
much reverence towards Williams' original play and, as a result, the
film often appears airless and stagy, lacking the vitality and realism
that Elia Kazan brought to his adaptation of
A Streetcar Named Desire.
Some of the performances (most notably Joanne Woodward's) are painfully
theatrical and Williams' florid dialogue often cuts against the stark
naturalism of Brando and Magnani's performances. In spite
of these obvious shortcomings,
The
Fugitive Kind is nothing less than riveting, from its lowkey
opening courtroom scene (in which the camera is locked on Brando's
face) to its utterly devastating conclusion. With its allusions
to racial hatred in the Deep South, the film was highly topical and
appears to be chillingly prescient in its cataclysmic ending, which
anticipates the eruption of race-related violence in 1960s America.
Whilst the film is somewhat better regarded today, it was ill-received
by the critics on its first release and was not a great commercial
success. Brando was himself dismissive of the film, and said that
in taking the one million dollar fee to appear in it he sold his soul
so that he could pay his ex-wife's alimony. At the time, he had
become disillusioned over his failure to complete his magnum opus
One-Eyed Jacks, his first and only
attempt to direct a film, an adventure which ended in bitter
frustration. By taking the lead role in
The Fugitive Kind, Brando was
forced to hand over the editing of
One-Eyed
Jacks to Paramount, an experience that created an open wound
which would poison his subsequent career and make him ever more
antagonistic towards the industry that had brought him wealth and
fame.
The role of Val Xavier is one of the last in which Brando appears to be
comfortable and which leaves a lasting impression, a tortured, lonely
character that resembles the actor in so many ways. When Val
eloquently describes who he is, a 'third kind' of person who neither
buys nor is bought, someone akin to a bird that never sets foot on the
Earth, you can't help feeling that Brando is painting the most
blisteringly authentic portrait of himself. There were still a
few great roles to come - Don Corleone in Coppola's
The Godfather (1972), Paul in
Bertolucci's
Last Tango in Paris (1972) -
but Brando's career was pretty well over after this film.
The Fugitive Kind might as well
have been his swansong.
© James Travers 2013
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
Having run into trouble with the law in New Orleans, a 30-year-old
drifter named Val Xavier leaves town determined to turn over a new
leaf. His only companion is his treasured guitar, which he takes
wherever he goes. Val finds work as a low-paid assistant in a
small-town store run by an older woman, Lady Torrance, and her
bedridden husband Jabe. Val repulses the advances of sex-mad
partygoer Carol Cutrere and instead begins an affair with Lady, perhaps
because she shares his loneliness and disillusionment with the
world. Moved by Lady's tragic past, Val helps her to put up a
confectionary extension to the store, unaware that Jabe has noticed his
interest in his wife. When he is threatened by the local sheriff,
Val makes up his mind to leave town, but he then discovers that Lady is
pregnant...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.