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IMDbPro

L'Homme à la peau de serpent

Original title: The Fugitive Kind
  • 1960
  • Approved
  • 1h 59m
IMDb RATING
7.1/10
7.7K
YOUR RATING
Marlon Brando, Anna Magnani, and Joanne Woodward in L'Homme à la peau de serpent (1960)
The Fugitive Kind: A Town Like This
Play clip5:29
Watch The Fugitive Kind: A Town Like This
1 Video
99+ Photos
Psychological DramaTragic RomanceDramaRomance

A guitar-playing drifter wanders into a small Mississippi town and inflames two troubled women.A guitar-playing drifter wanders into a small Mississippi town and inflames two troubled women.A guitar-playing drifter wanders into a small Mississippi town and inflames two troubled women.

  • Director
    • Sidney Lumet
  • Writers
    • Tennessee Williams
    • Meade Roberts
  • Stars
    • Marlon Brando
    • Joanne Woodward
    • Anna Magnani
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    7.1/10
    7.7K
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Sidney Lumet
    • Writers
      • Tennessee Williams
      • Meade Roberts
    • Stars
      • Marlon Brando
      • Joanne Woodward
      • Anna Magnani
    • 57User reviews
    • 60Critic reviews
  • See production info at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 2 wins total

    Videos1

    The Fugitive Kind: A Town Like This
    Clip 5:29
    The Fugitive Kind: A Town Like This

    Photos115

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    Top cast21

    Edit
    Marlon Brando
    Marlon Brando
    • Valentine Xavier
    Joanne Woodward
    Joanne Woodward
    • Carol Cutrere
    Anna Magnani
    Anna Magnani
    • Lady Torrance
    Maureen Stapleton
    Maureen Stapleton
    • Vee Talbot
    Victor Jory
    Victor Jory
    • Jabe Torrance
    R.G. Armstrong
    R.G. Armstrong
    • Sheriff Jordan Talbot
    Virgilia Chew
    • Nurse Porter
    Ben Yaffee
    • 'Dog' Hamma
    Joe Brown Jr.
    • 'Pee Wee' Binnings
    Mary Perry
    Madame Spivy
    Madame Spivy
    • Ruby Lightfoot
    • (as Spivy)
    John Baragrey
    John Baragrey
    • David Cutrere
    Sally Gracie
    • Dolly Hamma
    Lucille Benson
    Lucille Benson
    • Beulah Binnings
    Emory Richardson
    • Uncle Pleasant
    Neil Harrison
      Janice Mars
      • Gas Station Attendant's Wife
      Jeanne Barr
      Jeanne Barr
      • Bit Part
      • (uncredited)
      • Director
        • Sidney Lumet
      • Writers
        • Tennessee Williams
        • Meade Roberts
      • All cast & crew
      • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

      User reviews57

      7.17.7K
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      Featured reviews

      7moonspinner55

      Wordy, good-looking soaper for grown-ups

      Tennessee Williams and Meade Roberts co-adapted Williams' play "Orpheus Descending" about a reluctant stud drifting through backwater town, stirring up the passions of an Italian shopkeeper who's married to a cranky invalid. Eerie and fabulously atmospheric piece gives the women in particular (Anna Magnani, Joanne Woodward, Maureen Stapleton) great roles to play. Marlon Brando, well-cast as the guitar-strumming gadabout with the bedroom eyes, doesn't seem as fully involved, and his focus tends to wander. Overall, an intriguing soap opera for mature audiences, beautifully photographed by Boris Kaufman and nimbly directed by Sidney Lumet. *** from ****
      8pauletterich-la

      Orpheus Descending

      Based on the play "Orpheus Descending" by Tennessee Williams directed by Sidney Lumet with an exceptional cast: Marlon Brando, Anna Magnani, Joanne Woodward, Maureen Stapleton and Victor Jory. I saw it for the first time when I was still in my teens and I had an opaque, sticky memory of the film so when somebody suggested to see it on DVD I knew we were in for an opaque, sticky evening but, as it happens, I was dead wrong. "The Fugitive Kind" is riveting with an opening monologue by Brando that is astonishing. A 1960 Brando when he had still, I imagine. hopes to be the actor, the man he wanted to be. There is an animal innocence in his eyes in his moves. The magnificent Magnani, who learned her lines phonetically because she didn't know English presented Brando with a challenge as an actress and as a woman. I hear it wasn't pretty but the result is a feast for the eyes and the ears. The film may not be perfect but I don't think the original material was either so what we got here is a unique opportunity to see this enormous artists giving their whole. That alone makes it a collectors item.
      8Quinoa1984

      not Williams, Lumet, or Brando's best, but it's still pretty damn good!

      The Fugitive Kind is a hot story of desire and loss and craving and heartbreak between a man and two women set in the deep south. Sounds like quintessential Tenessee Williams, and it is in spurts. Sometimes Williams leans towards being a little preachy, however true (little moments like when Brando and Stapleton have a quiet back and forth about racism via her painting kind of nails it on the head much), but it's his skills at doing melodrama that strike up the coolest beats. In fact, this is one of those super-cool movies of the late 50s that could have only starred someone like Brando, who looks at times disinterested in the scene but at the same time completely engaged, curious, smooth, harsh, and knowing of what life can bring with his trusty Ledbelly-signed guitar. It's not necessarily a towering work for the ages ala Williams collaboration 1 Streetcar Named Desire. But that doesn't mean it should be much under-looked either.

      As an early effort for Lumet it's also a scorcher dramatically; he's so good with the actors that whatever little missteps the script might take in pouring on the poetic prose in how some of the characters talk (there's a scene between Brando and Anna Magnani's characters by some ruin of a spot where she says people used to make love that is actually quite boring) can be usually forgiven. Magnani especially is interesting because she should be a case of miscasting, which, apparently in later years, Lumet admitted to. She seems low-key at first, but her strengths bloom out tenfold when it comes time to act like the hard-knock-life kind of woman she is, who's in a crap marriage and had a horrible affair with a man who didn't do anything after the summer they spent together. Now she's put into a situation where she does and doesn't want this drifter, and vice versa, and she's sometimes just as cool (though also quite tough and demanding in that big Italian mama way) as her counterpart.

      Meanwhile there's also Joanne Woodard, who has the kind of part many actresses love to chew on; feisty, outspoken, loud but also emotionally moody to the point that she admirably tries (and doesn't quite get to) the heights of Vivien Leigh with her classic Blanche Dubois. Overall, Lumet gets a good feel for the period- and shot in New York state no less- while working with good material and an even better cast. It won't ever be as revered as his other work, and at the same time it's much better than some would give it credit for, where the tragedy acts like another sweaty Southern caricature bemoaning existence and fitting on a bad pair of shoes.
      7steiner-sam

      Tennessee Williams in his grimiest southern town

      It's set in smalltown Mississippi in the 1950s and follows a down-and-out character who is trying to turn his life around and the doomed relationships into which he stumbles.

      Valentine Xavier (Marlon Brando), also know as Snakeskin because of the snakeskin jacket he wears, gets out of jail in New Orleans and hits the road. His car breaks down in the middle of a rainstorm in a little Mississippi town, so he stops and gets a job in a little mercantile store run by Lady Torrance (Anna Magnani). She's lonely and has an older sick husband, Jabe (Victor Jory), who doesn't trust her or the good-looking clerk she just hired, especially when she fixes up a little bedroom for Xavier in the back of the store.

      Lady Torrance gets some competition from a young rich woman, Carol (Joanne Woodward), who is often drunk and remembers Xavier from New Orleans. She's too over the top to be real competition for Lady Torrence, however.

      After Lady Torrence learns her husband was among an earlier group of vigilantes that burned down her father's vineyards and home with her father inside, she is determined to open a "confectionary" attached to the mercantile store, that is designed like a vineyard. She wants Jabe to see before she allows him to die.

      However, there is a conflagration at the end that unhappily resolves the plot.

      This is Tennessee Williams with his grimiest southern town filled with malfunctioning human relationships. There are only dim flares of hope throughout, only to be extinguished by the end. Marlon Brando, as one reviewer put it, is "an astonishing physical specimen, a statuesque hunk with the intellectual ennui of a philosopher, who moves with a panther-like ease" and is "the misfit we all want to be." Anna Magnani is the earthy older woman who is finally trying to grasp some joy from life. They are a potent combination, though I sometimes find Tennessee Williams' words to be overwrought.
      7MoreLord

      Top Notch Acting

      This is not a well-written film, but the acting is phenomenal. Brando and Magnani have really great chemistry and that's what carries the film. It is the acting of these two that make me want to watch this film time and time again. I didn't necessarily like Joanne Woodward in her role, it just didn't seem to fit her. It seemed like she was trying too hard or something, so I just tuned her out. But I was always tuned into Brando--its just something about him that just pulls you in--wondering what he'll do next in the scene. Anyway, The cinematography is great and adds to the moodiness of the film. Overall, the movie isn't necessarily Brando's greatest film, but it's by no means one of his worst. Unfortunately, there wasn't much to work with as far as the script, so the acting had to carry the film.

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      Storyline

      Edit

      Did you know

      Edit
      • Trivia
        Marlon Brando described Anna Magnani as being equally fiery and passionate off screen. He claimed she made a pass at him in a hotel before filming began.
      • Goofs
        At the cemetery, Xavier returns to the car and turns on its headlights. A much brighter studio light comes on a beat too late to further illuminate the right side of the frame.
      • Quotes

        Lady Torrance: Tell me some more about your self-control.

        Valentine Xavier: Well, they say that a woman can burn a man down, you know? But I can burn a woman down. I'm saying that I could. I'm not saying I would.

        Lady Torrance: What's the matter? Have they tired you out?

        Valentine Xavier: No, I'm not tired.

      • Connections
        Featured in American Masters: Tennessee Williams: Orpheus of the American Stage (1994)
      • Soundtracks
        Blanket Roll Blues
        Music by Kenyon Hopkins

        Lyrics by Tennessee Williams

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      FAQ18

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      Details

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      • Release date
        • January 6, 1961 (France)
      • Country of origin
        • United States
      • Language
        • English
      • Also known as
        • The Fugitive Kind
      • Filming locations
        • Gold Medal Studios, Bronx, New York City, New York, USA(Studio)
      • Production company
        • Pennebaker Productions
      • See more company credits at IMDbPro

      Box office

      Edit
      • Budget
        • $2,000,000 (estimated)
      See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

      Tech specs

      Edit
      • Runtime
        1 hour 59 minutes
      • Color
        • Black and White
      • Aspect ratio
        • 1.66 : 1

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