{"id":25391,"date":"2025-01-03T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-03T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=25391"},"modified":"2025-01-01T17:43:02","modified_gmt":"2025-01-02T01:43:02","slug":"classic-corner-the-fugitive-kind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/classic-corner-the-fugitive-kind\/","title":{"rendered":"Classic Corner: The Fugitive Kind<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cIt\u2019s Xavier,\u201d he mumbles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWith an X or an S?\u201d comes the reply, and an early hint at the kind of pointed metaphors The Fugitive Kind <\/em>will traffic in. No, his name is not \u201cSavior\u201d; it\u2019s \u201cXavier,\u201d though most of those who know him before that moment call him \u201cSnakeskin\u201d (after the jacket that gives serves as his Wild at Heart<\/em>-style symbol of individuality), and most of those after, or at least the one who matters, call him \u201cVal.\u201d You get a sense that he can shed those nicknames, and their connected identities, as easily as the snakes sheds its skin, that nothing much bothers this man who\u2019s apparently spent his life cruising by on his charisma. But over the course of the picture\u2019s two hours, he will find himself very invested indeed in the happiness of another person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Fugitive Kind<\/em> is a strange case of a movie I hadn\u2019t seen, but I had; I acted in a college production of Orpheus Descending<\/em>, the play from which Tennessee Williams and co-scripter Meade Roberts drew their screenplay. Orpheus<\/em> was itself an adaptation of Battle of Angels<\/em>, which Williams had written 17 years earlier\u2014his first produced play, and by his own admission, a spectacular failure. Despite the considerably larger cachet of Williams\u2019 credit, Orpheus<\/em> also failed, running less than 70 performances on Broadway, and then The Fugitive Kind<\/em> failed at the box office, in spite of the considerable interest in Williams\u2019s words again coming from the mouth of Streetcar Named Desire<\/em> sensation Marlon Brando. People just resisted<\/em> this story. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And honestly, it\u2019s not hard to see why\u2014even within the usual Williams playbook of broken dreams and lifelong compromises, it\u2019s pretty grim stuff. Our introduction to those themes first comes in the form of Vee Talbot, the sheriff\u2019s wife, played by an especially soft-hearted Maureen Stapleton. She first comes on as a bit of a pushover, but watch the way Lumet holds on her face after her husband first humiliates her, capturing vividly the humanity of what could be a caricature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In these early passages, we\u2019re struck by how deftly Williams\u2019s writing and Lumet\u2019s staging set up a sense of community; the sets and costumes and most of all the relationships allow us to believe people live here, and that they\u2019ve lived alongside each other for years. This is particularly present in how everyone regards Carol Cutrere (Joanne Woodward), especially the old biddies who hang around in the dry goods story; Carol is a firecracker, and she absolutely inflames them. She\u2019s a \u201cchurch-bitten reformer,\u201d a \u201cbenign exhibitionist\u201d\u2014truly one of his most fascinating characters\u2014and the way she explains \u201cgoin\u2019 jukin,\u2019\u201d she makes it an awfully hard offer to resist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lumet indulges in a narrative focal shift that\u2019s not far removed from that year\u2019s Psycho<\/em>; from the first act of the picture, you might think it\u2019s going to be about Val and Carol, with Anna Magnani\u2019s Lady just another of the colorful local characters. But she\u2019s not, and the picture is ultimately dependent on the heat she and Val (and Magnani and Brando) generate, on their hunger and desperation, and by the end, it\u2019s there, and it\u2019s real. She breaks your heart, even when the theatricality of the piece is laid bare (\u201cI have something to tell you that I never told you before\u201d is how a piece that\u2019s destined for actor\u2019s monologue books begins). Brando matches her, summoning up all of his quiet emotional intensity as he talks about the guitar and the signatures on it\u2014and aside from all of that, he\u2019s just beautiful<\/em> in this movie, whether doing the rough-edged \u201cSnakeskin\u201d thing early on, or when she cleans him up (nicely) to work in the store.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As with any good Williams work, The Fugitive Kind<\/em> is rife with symbolism, and it\u2019s most potently present in the form of the \u201cladies\u2019 confectionary\u201d that Lady and Val build together in back of the dry goods store, an oasis of beauty and calm in the midst of all this ugliness. Yet it never feels<\/em> like a symbol, or at least, never merely like one; I suspect this is where the Lumet touch comes in handy. It was shot, as many of Lumet\u2019s early films were (including 12 Angry Men, Long Day\u2019s Journey, <\/em>and The Pawnbroker<\/em>) by the great Boris Kaufman, who also lensed such quintessential \u201850s and \u201860s New York movies as On the Waterfront, Patterns, <\/em>and The World of Henry Orient. <\/em>It was Lumet\u2019s fourth film, and while he and Williams might seem like an odd match, clashing Northern urban and Southern Gothic, he also keeps the film grounded in a kind of reality. His staging, and Brando\u2019s reading, can make purple prose like \u201cFly away, little bird, before you get broke\u201d seem like something somewhat might actually say. Well, someone like Valentin Xavier, at least.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The Fugitive Kind” is streaming on Tubi<\/a> and PlutoTV<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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