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DVD A Streetcar Named Desire (Original Director's Version)
Looking for a benchmark in movie acting? Breakthrough performances don't come much more electrifying than Marlon Brando's animalistic turn as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. Sweaty, brutish, mumbling, yet with the balanced grace of a prizefighter, Brando storms through the role--a role he had originated in the Broadway production of Tennessee Williams's celebrated play. Stanley and his wife, Stella (as in Brando's oft-mimicked line, "Hey, Stellaaaaaa!"), are the earthy couple in New Orleans's French Quarter whose lives are upended by the arrival of Stella's sister, Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh). Blanche, a disturbed, lyrical, faded Southern belle, is immediately drawn into a battle of wills with Stanley, beautifully captured in the differing styles of the two actors. This extraordinarily fine adaptation won acting Oscars for Leigh, Kim Hunter (as Stella), and Karl Malden (as Blanche's clueless suitor), but not for Brando. Although it had already been considerably cleaned up from the daringly adult stage play, director Elia Kazan was forced to trim a few of the franker scenes he had shot. In 1993, Streetcar was rereleased in a "director's cut" that restored these moments, deepening a film that had already secured its place as an essential American work. --Robert Horton
Review(s): DVD A Streetcar Named Desire (Original Director's Version)
Emotional human drama in post war New Orleans
Elia Kazan's marvelous adaptation of Tennessee Williams award winning play is enhanced with some truly impeccable acting performances. Amazingly Marlon Brando who cemented his place in cinematic history with his portrayal of the brutish, volatile and sensual lout Stanley Kowalski was the only main player denied an Academy Award. Vivien Leigh, Karl Malden and Kim Hunter all garnered Oscars for their roles.
Leigh playing neurotic and fading Southern belle Blanche Dubois arrives in New Orleans complete with her fragile disposition to stay with her nurturing sister Stella played by Kim Hunter in the seedy French Quarter of New Orleans. Blanche hiding a sordid past had been run out of Laurel, Mississippi, fired from her teaching position for having an affair with a 17 year old boy.
Blanche received a warm reception from Stella but then Stanley enters the scene. Brando's hackles are immediately raised when he learned than Blanche had mortgaged the family estate Belle Reve and frittered away the proceeds depriving Stella of her share. Although Stella and Stanley had an often violent relationship they were deeply in love. The inevitable clash between the coarse Stanley and the genteel Blanche drove a wedge into their relationship creating major histrionics.
Blanche desperately wanted to start her life anew and Stanley's buddy Mitch played by Karl Malden had potential to be her life preserver and possible husband. Stanley however informed Mitch of Blanche's shady past and those plans became aborted.
The inevitable climax occurred when the pregnant Stella rushed to the hospital to deliver leaving Stanley and Blanche alone in their tiny apartment. Stanley being Stanley successfully pushed Blanche over the edge with his actions, reducing her to a delusional shell of herself and needing to be institutionalized.
Kazan's choice of the sordid settings of the Kowalski's apartment certainly magnified the fall from grace suffered by the psychologically fragile Blanche. The curious choice of the name of the apartment Elysian Fields, the mythical resting place for the blameless dead, provided foreshadowing for the drama that was to unfold. The legendary acting performances chronicling a myriad of, at times, dysfunctional interpersonal relationships were an impressive sight to behold, richly deserving of all the accolades.
A Juggernaut Named Brando
There are three reasons for watching "A Streetcar Named Desire": Brando. Brando. Brando.
Marlon Brando's bestial heat still flares off that black and white celluloid like the flashpots from the third row of a KISS concert. It is obvious why his work in this movie has been lauded, critiqued, dissected, imitated, codified and ultimately iconicized - it's absolutely astounding! To this day, few have captured that feral rawness and "natural-ness" that he exuded; an actor boldly pioneering a new style, a bravura "Method". The screen becomes all too two-dimensional when he is not onscreen.
On the other hand, Vivien Leigh's acting style, though lauded by film aficionados as a symbiotic, diametric marriage of intensity with Brando's, is just plain hard to watch and truthfully quite embarrassing at points.
For modern viewers, she cannot seem to "convince" with her old-school "presentational" style, clashing irreconcilably with Brando's "method".
The icy romance between Leigh and Karl Malden's character only serves to pound home the truth that sexual mores have moved too far from filmic 50s etiquette, to be in any way considered vital or even interesting to modern viewers, even though, for its day, much censorship was brought down upon "Streetcar". So we are left with an inordinate amount of yapping that Leigh inflicts on Malden; enough to make any man turn to drink, drugs, other women, other men, football, synchronized swimming or forsaking humanity and leaving for outer space like Chuck Heston in "Planet Of The Apes".
During Leigh's incessant rambles, strewn passim to illustrate her neuroticism, one continually wonders whether one is missing innuendo which was considered innuendo Back Then but which is now simply naivete, or whether there was any innuendo courted at all and it was as innocent and puling as it sounded. Ultimately, it is too taxing to pretend filmic sophistication and dissect character motivation - on a pure enjoyment level, Leigh delivers only to historians and Serious Critics.
Surely, 'The Play's The Thing' and the story is as vital now as it was then (that of the estranged sister - Leigh - with the profligate and promiscuous past attempting to excise her demons by immersing herself in a new life with her sister and brother-in-law - Kim Hunter and Brando), but the manner in which this tale is purveyed has dated, the only vital remaining aspect being Brando. Brando. Brando.
SHOCKING: HOW WOMEN ARE DRIVEN INSANE
I have watched this video 40 times and each time I get more out of it for being so shockingly real. Williams is a genius in psychology and how human systems create insanity in all the nuances of the collision between the gross and the fine, the male and female elements, gentile and vulgar, the delicate and the course, the inward and outward. What female or sensitive male has not experienced this collision and been unable to explain it? But human systems create and maintain insanity and this video shows it the best. Stanley overheard Blanch downputting him to his wife Stella as "common and vulgar, like an ape" and he became vindictive, aiming to be rid of her. This story unfolds around that plot and her grips on reality dissolve accordingly. Initially hypersensitive and convalescing from a young marriage ending in suicide, Blanch is again confronted with sorrow in adapting to her brother-in-law and her zvengalized sister. As Stanley becomes more ruthless, she seeks protection more from "Mitch" his buddy. Then Stanley finds out that in her town of "Oriel" she was a prostitute. Female psychology shows that early female promiscuity is often just a seeking of protection from the male element, and an inability to "just say no" is from fear of reprisal and lost protection. But society doesn't see it that way and she escaped Oriel to her sister's domicile. She wants Mitch for the same reason "just to finally relax--I am so tired of fearing." Such women go from man to man for protection, and since it doesn't work regress more with time and as they are labeled whorish their sink into insanity is next. She was thrown out of the first town because of her affair with a 17-yr old boy, duplicated in a scene with the newspaper boy who was superbly kind, gentlemanly, respectful and gentle (in direct contrast to Stanley) and so here again, she kisses him as a link to gentile reality, and confirmation as a lady. The most ruthless and cruel contradiction is when Stanley rapes Blanche and soon after commits her to a mental hospital. The "kind doctor" arrives and takes her away on his arm, and she seems in love, "always dependent on the kindness of strangers." The viewer is left to wonder what happens next--does she link to the kind elderly father doctor, and does Stella really reject Stanley for good, transfering her love to her baby?
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