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A Streetcar Named Desire
Release Date: 1951
Director: Elia Kazan
Screenwriter: Tennessee Williams
Starring:
Vivien Leigh, Marlon
Brando with Kim Hunter and Karl Malden
Genre: Drama
MPAA Rating: NR
Plot Summary:
Set in the French Quarter of post WWII New Orleans,
desperate and neurotic Blanche DuBois searches for someplace and someone to call
her own when she is forced out of her hometown after trying to seduce a teenage
boy whom she was teaching. What she finds is a wild town filled with characters
more desperate than herself -- namely the brutish Stanley who is in love with
Blanche's sister Stella and deeply mistrusts Blanche and her shadowy past.
Reviewed by Peter
Veugelaers © 2004
- See it or die!
The first shot
in A Streetcar Named Desire of the exterior of a two-storey house, where
most of the action takes place in the two hour length of the film, underscores
the psychological conflicts of the characters and the intensity of their
relationships. The house is claustrophobic and this accentuates how the
characters explode (read: Brando) or implode (Leigh, Hunter, and Malden)
emotionally.
Blanche du Bois (Vivien Leigh) treks to New
Orleans where her sister Stella and her husband Stanley live (respectively
played by Kim Hunter and Marlon Brando). The genteel Blanche has secrets and her
trip to New Orleans is something of a fresh beginning for her.
After a congenial start in her new home, Stanley suspects
Blanche has lost ownership of the family estate and he jibes and taunts her to
reveal the truth, as he believes he is entitled to a share of the money.
When Blanche meets Mitch (Karl Malden), one of Stanley’s card
playing partners, romance and love revitalizes itself but Stanley’s intimidation
of Blanche, his bouts of anger and stories and gossip about her are going to be
the terminus for the sisters and Mitch.
A Streetcar Named Desire is a tour-de force production
with staggering and memorable performances from the four main players. Director
Elia Kazan gets the most out of his actors providing intimate, tense and
emotional tete a tete between the characters.
Especially stirring is how the viewer is drawn into Blanche’s
plight. The limited use of set decoration uncannily represents the trapped
darkness of Blanche’s inner conflicts. Entering the circumstances of Blanche is
moving, a feat of Vivien Leigh’s acting prowess and Kazan’s directing.
Kazan and writer Tennessee Williams also provide a disturbing portrait of working class
masculinity in the characterization of Stanley Kowalski, the aggressive and
contradictory man, full of muscle and sensuality, but a child inside, played
credibly by the young Marlon Brando.
In Karl Malden’s portrayal of Mitch there is the opposite of Stanley in that he is outwardly
kind, loving and genuine but cunningly, director Kazan in some shots subtly
shows Mitch as also having aggressive tendencies. This is a skillful observation
of human nature that even the seemingly gentlest of men can be infected with the
scourge of dominance. The film is full of homespun observations about humanity,
mostly tragic.
A literate film, but with a
theatrical staginess, nevertheless is disturbing and real; lingers in the memory
as a powerful experience because of the unfortunate outcome of the character
conflict, which is painfully authentic.
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