The Fugitive Kind [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray]

Taken from the play Orpheus Descending by Tennessee Williams, The Fugitive Kind finds Val Xavier (Marlon Brando) as a guitar-slinging singer trying to leave his wild days in New Orleans behind. He is given a job in a small Mississippi town by Lady Torrance (Anna Magnani) as a hired hand and her lover. Her husband Jabe (Victor Jory) is an aging, embittered man who is dying. Val is also pursued by Carol (Joanne Woodward), a bedraggled tart who has been passed around and passed up by the town's high-class gentlemen. The screenplay by Williams and Meade Roberts reflects a familiar theme of dysfunctional Southerners descending into amoral affairs and alcoholism while trying to maintain an aura of plantation aristocracy of a long-gone era.