Joanne Woodward and Marlon Brando The Fugitive Kind (1960) dir. Sidney Lumet

Marlon Brando as Valentine "Snakeskin" Xavier The Fugitive Kind (1960) dir. Sidney Lumet

JOANNE WOODWARD in THE FUGITIVE KIND (1960), dir. Sidney Lumet

Marlon Brando, The Fugitive Kind

“Marlon Brando is one of the most brilliant and charismatic artists of the twentieth century. Like Elvis Presley, he is a supreme sexual persona, an icon who has entered our dreams and transformed the way we see the world. All contemporary American actors owe a debt to Brando and are in some sense in his shadow. He took the self-analytic and ensemble-based Stanislvaskian “Method” of the New York Actor’s Studio to Hollywood and helped put an end, for good or ill, to the old paternalistic studio system, with its corporate populism and army-like cadres of polished technicians. Today’s young white actors, emerging from comfortable respectable homes and lacking access to the hardening experiences of factories, freighters or battlefields, search for masculinity by aping Brando … Arrogant and manipulative, seething with raw sensitivities and burning rage, alternately harsh and kind, selfish and generous, Brando is a monumental personality of profound complexities and contradictions. He must be approached from the direction of other Western artists suffering spiritual conflicts and thwarted ambitions: Byron, Keats, Caravaggio, Michelangelo.”

Pop culture theorist Camille Paglia on Marlon Brando (3 April 1924 – 1 July 2004) in 1991, who was born 100 years ago today. I particularly love Brando’s performances in the 1953 juvenile delinquent / motorcycle gang flick The Wild One, opposite Anna Magnani in the underrated Tennessee Williams film adaptations The Fugitive Kind (1960) (pictured) and Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967).  

Timeless Cool: Marlon Brando and Joanne Woodward in The Fugitive Kind, 1960

The Fugitive Kind (1960) Marlon Brando

joanne woodward in a promotional photo for the fugitive kind (1959)

[contact sheets : The Fugitive Kind] :: [Follies Of God]

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“And in this city a man will go mad with paresis, another with terror, a third will drown himself and the newspapers will report death from cancer and cerebral hemorrhage among our leading citizens, and there will casual mention of various epidemics, of lust murders, of famine and starvation, and the decline of Utilities on the New York Exchange. But all that’s forgotten tonight, God’s asleep. And if you have any questions to ask about the chaotic conditions on this little spherical toy of his, you’ll have to refer them to his secretary, who will send you form letter No. X99 explaining that accidents will happen and that of course God’s ways are necessarily rather obscure to man.” ― Tennessee Williams, Fugitive Kind

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[I remember seeing this film in college and it almost sending me into an episode of clinical depression. It was pretty disturbing for me as a 17 year old. Or :: I think it's "The Chase" I'm thinking of with Jane Fonda and Marlon Brando. I grew up with pretty PG rated movies and the movies I saw in college found me really unprepared for what was "up" in the culture then.]

A very happy birthday to Joanne Woodward!

The Fugitive Kind by Sidney Lumet, 1960

Best Anna Magnani movies and performances:

1. Roma città aperta - Roberto Rosselli i (1945)

2. Mamma Roma - Pier Paolo Pasolini (1962)

3. The Secret of Santa Vittoria - Stanley Kramer (1969)

4. The Fugitive Kind - Sidney Lumet (1960)

Blu-ray review: “The Fugitive Kind” (1960)

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– You know, Lady, there’s people bought and sold in this world like carcasses of hogs in butcher shops. You might think that there’s many kinds of people in this world. But there’s only two kinds: The buyers and the ones that get bought. No, there’s another kind. – What kind? – It’s a kind that don’t belong no place at all. There’s a kind of bird that don’t have any legs so it can’t alight on nothing. So it has to spend its whole life on its wings in the air. I seen one, once. It died and fell to earth. And its body was light blue colored. And it was just as tiny as your little finger. And it was so light in the palm of your hand that it didn’t weigh more than a feather. And its wings spread out that wide. And you could see right through them. That’s why the hawks don’t catch them. . .because they don’t see ’em. They don’t see ’em way up in that high blue sky near the sun