Lightfoot Sally Gracie as Dolly Hamma Lucille Benson as Beulah Binnings Emory Richardson as Uncle Pleasant, the Conjure Man Neil Harrison Frank Borgman as Gas Station Attendant Janice Mars as Attendant's Wife Debbie Lynch as Lonely Girl Jeanne Barr Herb Vigran as Caliope Player Critical reception In his review in The New York Times, Bosley Crowther described the film as a piercing account of loneliness and disappointment in a crass and tyrannical world . . . [Sidney Lumet's] plainly perceptive understanding of the deep-running skills of the two stars, his daring with faces in close-up and his out-right audacity in pacing his film at a morbid tempo that lets time drag and passions slowly shape are responsible for much of the insistence and the mesmeric quality that emerge . . . Mr. Brando and Miss Magnani . . . being fine and intelligent performers . . . play upon deep emotional chords . . . Miss Woodward is perhaps a bit too florid for full credibility . . . But Miss Stapleton's housewife is touching and Victor Jory is simply superb as the inhuman, sadistic husband . . . An excellent musical score by Kenyon Hopkins, laced with crystalline sounds and guitar strains, enhances the mood of sadness in this sensitive film. In the Chicago Reader, Jonathan Rosenbaum observed, "Unfortunately, director Sidney Lumet, who's often out of his element when he leaves New York, seems positively baffled by the gothic south and doesn't know quite what to do with the overlay of Greek myth either." The Time Out London Film Guide feels that "despite its stellar credentials, just about everything is wrong with this adaptation of Tennessee Williams' play Orpheus Descending . . . Lumet's direction is either ponderous or pretentious, and he failed to crack the problem of the florid stage dialogue and a dangerously weak role for Brando", and Channel 4 describes it as "a less than satisfying experience . . . disappointing stuff." In popular culture Some dialogue from a scene in the film was used by Australian hip hop trio Bliss n Eso in their song "Never Land", off their album Running on Air. Sailor Ripley (Nicolas Cage) wears a snakeskin jacket exactly like Val's in the film Wild at Heart. See also List of American films of 1960 References External links The Fugitive Kind: When Sidney Went to Tennessee an essay by David Thomson at