DVD/150: THE FUGITIVE KIND (Sidney Lumet, 1960)

After the success of CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, Tennessee Williams dusted off his 1940 flop BAND OF ANGELS and revised it as ORPHEUS DESCENDING but it ran only two months.

 

Sidney Lumet directed Williams' film co-adaptation retitled THE FUGITIVE KIND with the explosive pairing of Marlon Brando and Anna Magnani.

 

Things went wrong quickly... they only rehearsed a few times as Magnani was insecure working in English for only the third time and her expected affair with Brando fizzled as he disliked her.

He disliked Joanne Woodward too and his 'method' meanderings threw Magnani who, having learnt her lines phonetically, needed to hear her cue words.

It fell to his friend Maureen Stapleton to upbraid him on his behaviour; Stapleton played a supporting role but had played Magnani's role on Broadway, which made things awkward at times.

 

It proved unsuccessful on release, but holds a grim fascination.

 

Shelf or charity shop?  Shelf (but possibly dangling it's legs over the edge). Having seen Vanessa Redgrave and Helen Mirren both triumph onstage in the role of Lady Torrence, I love Tennessee's Southern Gothic of ORPHEUS DESCENDING where once again he shows the fractured sensitive souls who are overcome by the evil that men do, but Sidney Lumet never really convinces that lives are at stake.  The performances lack a cohesion, probably not helped by Brando's on-set coldness. He was the first actor to be paid £1 million for this role which obviously gave him the clout to be as stroppy as possible; all the more annoying as he never gives an actual performance - his Val Xavier is a collection of muttered asides and mournful stares.  Joanne Woodward occasionally connects as the outcast rich girl Carol Cutrere, her final scene hints at what she could have done. Anna Magnani - although occasionally unintelligible - delivers a performance that is full of fire and pain. Williams' co-written script is at fault as it speeds too quickly to it's fiery denouement, not giving Magnani the chance to vary the tone of her performance. More successful are Maureen Stapleton as the lonely housewife Vee Talbot, RG Armstrong as her cruel sheriff husband (he played this on Broadway too) and Victor Jory as Magnani's sadistic. dying husband.  A missed opportunity.

DVD/150: MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (Sidney Lumet, 1974)

The first of four EMI Agatha Christie starry adaptations of the 70s and 80s always brings back the thrill of seeing it on the big screen when first released.

 

Christie's 1934 classic has Hercule Poirot solving the brutal stabbing of a shady businessman on a snowbound train with the usual cross-section of probable and improbable suspects.

Sidney Lumet was always a fine director of actors and here he orchestrates his cast into a wonderful ensemble.

It is almost an anti-thriller: after the murder, there is no feeling of threat to the other characters, just the pleasure of watching Albert Finney's dazzling Poirot question the other passengers one-by-one.

Lumet offered Ingrid Bergman the role of Princess Dragomiroff - after Dietrich said no - but she chose instead the smaller role of the missionary.  He filmed her 5 minute scene in one take - and she won an Oscar for it!

Shelf or charity shop? Total shelf for Lumet's direction, Geoffrey Unsworth's cinematography, Tony Walton's production design and costumes, Richard Rodney Bennett's score and of course that cast!  Pauline Kael, in her New Yorker review, called it a film full of 'turns' which is, of course, the pleasure of watching it.  Personal favourites are Bergman, Finney, John Gielgud's disdainful manservant, and Vanessa Redgrave who has never seemed so relaxed and playful.  Sadly, it would be a lonely cast reunion with only four of the seventeen main cast members still alive at time of writing.  A special mention too for the unnerving montage intro that lingers in the mind as the film progresses and the blue-lit murder scene.