Film Forum

U.S., 1960
Directed by Sidney Lumet
Starring Marlon Brando, Anna Magnani, Joanne Woodward
Approx. 121 min. DCP.

Ex-New Orleans blues player Marlon Brando sports a snakeskin jacket as he drifts into a small Southern town and an affair with storekeeper Anna Magnani (ROME OPEN CITY), while simultaneously being pursued by old plantation family black sheep Joanne Woodward. Adapted from Tennessee Williams’ Orpheus Descending.

Reviews

“But at the center of his drama, which grimly and relentlessly takes place in the sweaty and noxious climate of a backwash Louisiana town, there are two brave and enterprising people whose inevitably frustrating fate assumes, from the vibrance of their natures, the shape of tragedy. And because Marlon Brando and Anna Magnani play these two people brilliantly, THE FUGITIVE KIND has a distinction and a sensitivity that are rare today in films. Credit, too, Sidney Lumet, who has directed this piercing account of loneliness and disappointment in a crass and tyrannical world.”
– Bosley Crowther, The New York Times