A Fugitive Kind (1960) - Rewatch

Plot:   In a small Southern town, the Italian wife of a dying store owner hires a drifter to help her run the store. Complications ensue.
Stars:  Marlon Brando, Anna Magnani, Joanne Woodward, R.G. Armstrong, Maureen Staplelton,
Best Quote:  Tennessee, darling, they've absolutely ruined your perfectly dreadful play - Tallulah Bankhead

Runner-up Quote:  Walked out- Brando enourmously fat and quite incoherent - pauses for hours between every unitelligible word - and the whole thing is a crushing bore - John Gielgud. 

I was far too generous with this film the first time round.  Yes, the acting is good, but the story and characters are simply awful, and its hard to see why all this first-rate talent was so eager to do it. Outside of the two main characters, everyone is either unpleasant or grotesque,  No wonder the original Broadway play was a flop.

Usually, Williams creates villains that are bad - but energetic and larger-then-life.  Here, they're just small-town jerks. To make us sympathize with Magnani's adultery, her dying husband is portrayed as a nasty man full of insults and sarcasm.  And to make us root against Joanne Woodward -Magnini's rival for Brando - she's given strange makeup, unattractive clothes, and runs around drunk and having sex in the cemetery!  Just as bad, we get the  usual Southern-fried Hollywood stereotypes, including (groan) the bigoted Sheriff telling Brando to get out of town by sundown. Hey, they take adultery seriously down in Dixie!

And we're SUPPOSED to care for drifter Brando (named "snakeskin"), but we don't, because his character is so superficially drawn.  Brando does what he can, and he's in full mumble-pause mode, but his character is never believable**. He's another movie stumble-bum/drifter who's really a Saint underneath it all.  The only  realistic/likable character is Magnani - but she's only a part of the movie.

Direction? The movie starts off well, with New Orleans trial scene, and Brando's arrival in the small town. But the whole things gets duller and more unpleasant as it moves along. And it drags on for two hours. Summary: On re-watch my opinion is lowered, even some good acting can't save this lumbering, odd, bore of a movie.

** - Brando's character is given a guitar, which he treasures above all.  But he almost never plays it, and Brando never sings. It exists mainly, to give Brando's character an interesting attribute, and to hide Brando's big stomach.