The Fugitive Kind (1960)

If you like to watch good acting this is the movie for you. Marlon Brando, Joanne Woodward, Anna Magnani, and Maureen Stapleton are all great in this film written by Tennessee Williams play, and based on his play Orpheus Descending.
Like all of Tennessee’s writings, the story deals with the smoldering human desires that dwell beneath the surface in a small Southern town. Great, Southern Gothic dialogue (“I carried your child in my body. The summer you quit me”). Every scene is designed to make the viewer uncomfortable.
Valentine ‘Snakeskin’ Xavier (played by Brando), who has just been bounced from New Orleans by the law has just turned 30 and is looking to turn over a new leaf. he lands in a small town and gets a job in a store run by Lady Torrence (Magnani) , a star struck woman whose tyrant husband is dying of cancer upstairs and bangs his cane on the floor when he wants her. Val is pursued by Carol Cutere (Joanne Woodward), the local tramp.
We can see the look in Lady’s eyes and we know that she is heading for trouble when she hires Val to work in the store. She knows she is headed for trouble too, but she can’t help herself. Val, not one to mince words tells Lady what he thinks of her : “I see a not so young, not so satisfied woman … who hires a guy in off the highway to do double duty … without even giving him overtime for it.” We can see Val try to contain the violent emotions that we know lurk beneath his calm facade. Lady knows what Val thinks of her, but she can’t help herself.
Val really does fall for Lady but the Sheriff tells him to be out of town by sundown. Before he leaves he finds out Lady is pregnant.
In a truly bizarre ending, even for Tennessee Williams, the dying husband burns down the house and shoots and kills Lady with Carol screaming in the background for Val. Val also dies in the flames being driven into them by the firemen’s hoses.
A very good movie, especially for those with a taste for things different.