For those who like Tennessee Williams

I was looking through the movies on my DVR trying to figure out what I should watch and do a review on. I eventually settled on The Fugitive Kind. Not having seen it before, I didn't realize until I watched it that it was based on a play by Tennessee Williams. But I watched it anyway to do a review here.

Marlon Brnado plays Valentine Xavier, nicknamed "Snakeskin" because of the snakeskin coat that he wears. He also plays a guitar, which is apparently a symbol to some people that he's up to no good. In fact, he's getting kicked out of New Orleans at the start of the movie, fleeing to wherever he ends up, which just happens to be a small town in Mississippi.

One of the first people he meets there is Vee Talbot (Maureen Stapleton), from whom he asks about the possibility of renting a room and getting a job. Vee informs him that there's a general store in town that might be able to use him. She also feels some attraction for him, since he's a young newcomer and she's probably frustrated by her husband the local sheriff (R.G. Armstrong) and being trapped in a small town.

Vee isn't the only woman interested in Snakeskin. There's also Carol Cutrere (Joanne Woodward), the local loose woman who drinks a lot and likes to go juking, which means doing the grand tour of all the local road houses, having a drink or two at each of them, and some dancing and making out. She's apparently got quite the reputation, since the owner of one of the juke joints insists to Snakeskin that he get Carol out of the place.

And then Snakskin goes to the Torrance store to inquire about that job. The store is nominally owned by Jabe Torrance (Victor Jory), but he's bedridden upstairs with some sort of injury that has him getting injections of what I'm guessing was heroin to which he's addicted, although I don't think the movie made this quite explicit. So the store downstairs is being run by his wife, Lady Torrance (Anna Magnani), who also falls for Snakeskin even though she too has secrets of her own. The sheriff learns from Vee that Snakeskin might be a risk to everybody in town and orders him to leave, but then some of those secrets come to life.

As I said at the beginning, I didn't realize until I saw the opening credits that The Fugitive Kind is based on a play by Tennessee Williams. As you might be able to guess from that opening paragraph, I'm not the biggest fan of Williams, or a lot of Southern gothic, finding the characters overheated and artificial, as well as generally unsympathetic. The Fugitive Kind has that in spades; when Marlon Brando is playing the most sympathetic of all the lead characters you know there's a problem here.

In some ways, that's a big shame, too, since the movie is actually generally well acted. It's just that the actors are all given such ridiculous material to work with, being asked to be loud and obnoxious. Some people are definitely going to love The Fugitive Kind, especially if they already like Southern gothic and wand to see a movie for the acting lessons one can glean. Others, like me, may find it a bit of a slog. So The Fugitive Kind is definitely the sort of movie you're going to want to watch and judge for yourself.