Based on Tennessee Williams’s 1957 play Orpheus Descending, Sidney Lumet’s drama of drifter Valentine “Snakeskin” Xavier (Marlon Brando) seeking the straight-and-narrow path via a new start in small-town Mississippi could at face value be considered a departure for the director, though only by way of location; the picture’s themes of class divide and social tension are on par with Lumet’s interest in the working-class of 1960s America. Brooding alongside a dynamic Joanne Woodward and the earthy yet defeated Anna Magnani (Mamma Roma), Brando delivers another in a series of grounded performances aligned with his well-known off-screen sympathies for social justice issues.