Set in the French Quarter of New Orleans during the restless years following World War Two, A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE is the story of Blanche DuBois, a fragile and neurotic woman on a desperate prowl for someplace in the world to call her own. After being exiled from her hometown of Laurel, Mississippi for seducing a seventeen-year-old boy at the school where she taught English, Blanche explains her unexpected appearance on Stanley and Stella's (Blanche's sister) doorstep as nervous exhaustion. This, she claims, is the result of a series of financial calamities which have recently claimed the family plantation, Belle Reve. Suspicious, Stanley points out that "under Louisiana's napoleonic code what belongs to the wife belongs to the husband." Stanley, a sinewy and brutish man, is as territorial as a panther. He tells Blanche he doesn't like to be swindled and demands to see the bill of sale. This encounter defines Stanley and Blanche's relationship. They are opposing camps and Stella is caught in no-man's-land. But Stanley and Stella are deeply in love. Blanche's efforts to impose herself between them only enrages the animal inside Stanley. When Mitch -- a card-playing buddy of Stanley's -- arrives on the scene, Blanche begins to see a way out of her predicament. Mitch, himself alone in the world, reveres Blanche as a beautiful and refined woman. Yet, as rumors of Blanche's past in Laurel begin to catch up to her, her circumstances become unbearable.





Thomas Lanier Williams, nicknamed Tennessee, is arguably one of America’s greatest playwrights, and certainly the greatest ever from the South, Tennessee Williams wrote fiction and motion picture screenplays, but he is acclaimed primarily for his play—nearly all of which are set in the South, but which at their best rise above regionalism to approach universal themes.

"There are no 'good' or 'bad' people. Some are a little better or a little worse but all are activated more by misunderstanding than malice. A blindness to what is going on in each other's hearts. Stanley sees Blanche not as a desperate, driven creature backed into a last corner to make a last desperate stand - but as a calculating bitch with 'round heels'.... Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos. That is the way we all see each other in life." (Tennessee Williams in Elia Kazan's autobiography A Life, 1988)






Elia Kazan was an American stage and film director, whose best-known works include the Oscar winning films GENTLEMAN'S AGREEMENT and ON THE WATERFRONT (1954). Many of Elia Kazan's works have social or political theme. He was brilliant and adept at both film and stage and was a master of William's work. He understood the language and understood the complexity, and more importantly, the humor of the world in which these people thrived. "Streetcar" has both pathos and dark humor filtered throughout the text. Kazan used shadows and light to convey texture and feeling in a play already filled to the brim with possibilities. He never once allowed the camera to overshadow the words. William's play screams for simplicity and definition, both of which were handled deftly by Kazan.





An agent for David L. Selznick saw Kim in a stage production at the Pasadena Playhouse and signed her to a seven-year contract. Selznick suggested she change her name to Kim and an RKO secretary suggested the last name of Hunter. A few years later, Irene Mayer Selznick, David's ex-wife by then, recommended Kim for the role of Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951).

She put up with a lot of grief from Marlon Brando in "Streetcar"-being the "Stella" for whom he was shouting and ranting for, but it paid off with an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Unfortunately, however, it was the high point of her movie career, partially because she was blacklisted for several years during the McCarthy era. On stage from age 17, the Actors' Studio student made an impressive screen debut as the fresh-faced ingenue of "The Seventh Victim", a creepy lowbudget thriller from producer Val Lewton. She played a similar role in another stylish B, When Strangers Marry (directed by William Castle and costarring Robert Mitchum, then on his way up stardom's ladder), and was cast by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger in their brilliant fantasy, "Stairway to Heaven". Later on ofcourse, Hunter recieved huge cult ststus and majoy movie sucsess in the first three original "Planet of The Apes" movies as simian Zera opposite Roddy MacDowell.

Hunter's Oscar winning (and Tony winning) perfromance is stunning. In one of the scenes Kazan was forced to cut out in the final edit, Hunter stands on the stairs after Brando's violent outburst. There's a look of primitive lust in her eyes that the censors of the 50's found "morbid" and "disgusting". Elia was forced to remove the scene. If you get the Director's cut, you can see this amazing 2 minutes on screen. Hunter shows a side to Stella that helps us understand why she needed him. Craved him. And wanted him badly to "taker her off of that high white cloumn in those fancy pictures." She is in desperate need of him on a very basic level. It's miraculous.





Malden, as with Kim Hunter, reprised his role in the film as Mitch, the elligble suitor Blanche has her eye on. Malden's wonderful, excitable, playful manner in which he takes Blanche out for dinner on the warf, is unparralleled. His bounding up from the dinner table and announcing his height, weight, and stature is both hilarious and frightening. His desperation is clear. His motives are pure, and it makes the ending not only incredibly sad, but pathetic in everyone's version.





"He's like an animal. He has animal's habits. There's even something subhuman about him. Thousands of years have passed him right by and there he is. Stanley Kowalski, survivor of the stone age, bearing the raw meat home from the kill in the jungle."

Blanche describing Stanely to Stella.

Marlon Brando is widely considered the greatest movie actor of all time, rivaled as an actor only by the more theatrically oriented Laurence Olivier in terms of esteem. Unlike Olivier, who preferred the stage to the screen, Brando concentrated his talents on movies after bidding the Broadway stage adieu in 1949, a decision for which he was severely criticized when his star began to dim in the 1960s and he was excoriated for squandering his talents. No actor ever exerted such a profound influence on succeeding generations of actors as did Brando.

Originally, it was John Garfield whom producer Irene Mayer Selznick had chosen to play the lead in a new Tennessee Williams play she was about to produce, but negotiations broke down when Garfield demanded an ownership stake in "A Streetcar Named Desire." Burt Lancaster was next approached, but couldn't get out of a prior film commitment. Then director Elia Kazan suggested Brando, whom he had directed to great effect in Maxwell Anderson's play "Truckline Café," in which Brando co-starred with Karl Malden, who was to remain a close friend for the next 60 years.

The problem with casting Brando as Stanley was that he was much younger than the character as written by Williams. However, after a meeting between Brando and Williams, the playwright eagerly agreed that Brando would make an ideal Stanley. Williams believed that by casting a younger actor, the Neanderthalish Kowalski would evolve from being a vicious older man to someone whose unintentional cruelty can be attributed to his youthful ignorance.

Brando ultimately was dissatisfied with his performance, saying he never was able to bring out the humor of the character, which was ironic as his characterization often drew laughs from the audience at the expense of Jessica Tandy's Blanche Dubois. During the out-of-town tryouts, Kazan realized that Brando's magnetism was attracting attention and audience sympathy away from Blanche to Stanley, which was not what the playwright intended. The audience's sympathy should be solely with Blanche, but many spectators were identifying with Stanley. Kazan queried Williams on the matter, broaching the idea of a slight rewrite to tip the scales back to more of a balance between Stanley and Blanche, but Williams demurred, smitten as he was by Brando, just like the preview audiences.

On his part, Brando believed that the audience sided with his Stanley because Tandy was too shrill. He thought Vivien Leigh, who played the part in the movie, was ideal, as she was not only a great beauty but she WAS Blanche Dubois, troubled as she was in her real life by mental illness and nymphomania. Brando's appearance as Stanley on stage and on screen revolutionized American acting by introducing "The Method" into American consciousness and culture.

Brando didn't like the term "The Method," which quickly became the prominent paradigm taught by such acting gurus as Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio. Brando denounced Strasberg in his autobiography "Songs My Mother Taught Me" (1994), saying that he was a talentless exploiter who claimed he had been Brando's mentor. The Actors Studio had been founded by Strasberg along with Kazan and Stella Adler's husband, Harold Clurman, all Group Theatre alumni, all political progressives deeply committed to the didactic function of the stage. Brando credits his knowledge of the craft to Adler and Kazan, while Kazan in his autobiography "A Life" claimed that Brando's genius thrived due to the thorough training Adler had given him. Adler's method emphasized that authenticity in acting is achieved by drawing on inner reality to expose deep emotional experience

Interestingly, Kazan believed that Brando had ruined two generations of actors, his contemporaries and those who came after him, all wanting to emulate the great Brando by employing The Method. Kazan felt that Brando was never a Method actor, that he had been highly trained by Adler and did not rely on gut instincts for his performances, as was commonly believed. Many a young actor, mistaken about the true roots of Brando's genius, thought that all it took was to find a character's motivation, empathize with the character through sense and memory association, and regurgitate it all on stage to become the character. That's not how the superbly trained Brando did it; he could, for example, play accents, whereas your average American Method actor could not. There was a method to Brando's art, Kazan felt, but it was not The Method.





Stanely is an American theatrical legend, and Brando's perfomance is beyond anything imaginable. He is everything Stanely is, and a few things not truly in the text. We hate him, we loathe him, and we know him, and most of this is due to Brando and his extraordinary talent.

Consider the scene where Stanely first enters and he decides to change shirts in front of Blanche. Brando turns his back to the camera, and leans over, jutting out his behind and his naked back as he reaches for a clean shirt. There's no acting in Leigh's moment here, we are all thinking exactly what she's thinking.

Or listen to his "Ha!" when he laughs in Blanche's face. It doesn't have a mocking tone so much as it has a filth to it. As if Stanely is spitting in Blanche's face. As if he's taking all her lies and throwing them back at her with equal disdain. There are very few performances like this on screen. This is once in a lifetime acting.







Vivian Mary Hartley was born on November 5, 1913, in Darjeeling, India, a strange place for one of the world's most celebrated actresses to be born. She was to live in this beautiful country for the next six years. Her parents wanted to go home to England but because of World War I they opted to stay in India. At the end of the war the Hartleys headed back to their home country, where Vivien's mother wanted her daughter to have a convent education. She was one of the youngest in attendance. While there her mother came for a visit and took her to a play on London's legendary West Side. It was there that Vivien decided to become an actress.

Years later Vivian met and fell in love with Laurence Olivier and they continued their marriage for the next 20 years.

History ofcourse was made when the Selznik brother stumbled upon English actress Liegh as they were casting the plum role of Scarlett O'Hara in "Gone With The Wind". The rest is movie history.

In 1948 Vivian portrayed Blanche Dubois in London's West end, and when the time came for the movie version, Jessica Tandy was slighted for Leigh's Oscar notworthy status as a movie star, and it won Vivian her second Oscar. And deservedly so.

Leigh's Blanche is a quivering, shaking, fragile, manic, undeniably frustrated sexual preditor. She is a compkete and utter contradiction. She, as William's wrote her, is not a villian, nor is she a victim. She is both and she is neither. She lives in a world, as with most of William's heriones, where "enchantment" is key, and the light is blurred. It's not just that Leigh plays her as "mad", that would be easy. It's that she plays her as constantly running. From what we're never sure, but the thought of this impeding danger is palatble.

I think what's most astounding about this particular performance is that it's almost musical. Leigh introduces a vocal quality in Blanche that I've never heard before or since. She's at once a lilting breathy Soprano, and then at the turn of a page, a bellowing, catterwalling Alto. She worked on this painstakingly.

"When Blanche lied, her voice went up. When she told the truth, she was breathless. Excited to share her stories" Leigh said in an interview.

Amazing.

Never equalled. Never copied, and a miraculous, incredible, unparralelled performance. Leigh is very underrated, and in this movie and in this role, she is quite frankly, the defining Blanche Dubois.




Here's a small preview. Try and ignore the obnoxious announcer. He sounds like he's letting us in on the winner of the Kentucky Derby.















"Streetcar" Trivia


* Jessica Tandy was originally slated to play Blanche, after creating the role on Broadway. The role was given to Vivien Leigh (after Olivia de Havilland refused it) because she had more box-office appeal.

* John Garfield turned down the role of Stanley Kowalski because he didn't want to be overshadowed by the female lead.

* Vivien Leigh, who suffered from bipolar disorder in real life, later had difficulties in distinguishing her real life from that of Blanche DuBois.

* Mickey Kuhn, who played Vivien Leigh's nephew, Beau Wilkes, in Gone with the Wind (1939) also played the young sailor who helps her onto the streetcar in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). It's not recorded as to whether they recognized each other after twelve years or not.

* To date (2003), it is one of only two films in history to win three Academy awards for acting. The other is Network (1976)

* Vivien Leigh had already played Blanche in the first London production of the play, under the direction of her then-husband, Laurence Olivier. She later said that Olivier's direction of that production influenced her performance in the film more than did Elia Kazan's direction of the film.

* Seven members of the original Broadway cast repeated their roles in the film, a highly unusual decision at the time and even today, when original casts of plays are often completely replaced for the film versions. However, Vivien Leigh, who had played Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939), was selected to play Blanche du Bois over Jessica Tandy to add "star power" to the picture (Marlon Brando had not yet achieved full stardom in films; he would be billed under Leigh in the film's credits).

* Vivien Leigh initially felt completely at sea when she joined the tight New York cast in rehearsals. Director Elia Kazan was able to exploit her feelings of alienation and disorientation to enrich her performance.






Stella: But there are things that happen, between a man and a woman, in the dark, that sorta make everything else seem unimportant

Blanche: What you are talking about is brutal desire. Just desire. The name of that rattletrap streetcar that bangs through the Quarter, up one old narrow street and down another.

Stella: Haven't you ever ridden that streetcar?

Blanche: It brought me here, where I'm not wanted, and where I'm ashamed to be.




Stanely: Take a look at yourself here in a worn-out Mardi Gras outfit, rented for 50 cents from some rag-picker. And with a crazy crown on. Now what kind of a queen do you think you are? Do you know that I've been on to you from the start, and not once did you pull the wool over this boy's eyes? You come in here and you sprinkle the place with powder and you spray perfume and you stick a paper lantern over the light bulb - and, lo and behold, the place has turned to Egypt and you are the Queen of the Nile, sitting on your throne, swilling down my liquor. And do you know what I say? Ha ha! Do you hear me? Ha ha ha!




Whoever you are, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.

She is led away by another stranger - this time, a kindly one.

Disgusted by Stanley and suspicious of him, Stella vows to have nothing more to do with him and will not return to him. He will be justly punished for his lustful violation of his sister-in-law: "Don't you touch me. Don't you ever touch me again." After Blanche has departed for the asylum, Stella takes her wrapped-up baby in her arms [a visual Madonna and child image] and refuses to listen to her husband's entreaties. While nestling her new baby in her arms, she vows: "I'm not going back in there again. Not this time. I'm never going back. Never." She climbs to the upstairs neighbor's apartment after rejecting him.

[In the play, Stella will stand by her husband Stanley and take him back, even after he has raped her sister. In the film, Stanley had to be punished after raping Blanche by losing Stella's love.]

The arrival of the baby is just as disruptive to Stanley's relationship with Stella as Blanche's arrival was. Things will change forever as Stella will now be less dependent upon him for emotional and sexual support with her attachment to her child.

Stanley customarily bellows: "Hey Stella. Hey Stella," as the film ends.








"Streetcar" is about lust, greed, power, truth, heat, apetite, and the loss of human dignity. It's also about regaining the human spirit. Stella has a choice and we know at the end of the play she is different. She is changed, and Stanely will be bellowing for a long time to an empty chair. It was a classic American play, and the movie was as faithful as it could be with the 1950's sensibility breathing down it's neck. It is a fable of untold porportions. It is the American dream done in black and white with the truth stained down the front of it. It is a masterpiece in words and visuals. There has never been it's equal.