A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

Warner Bros.
Director: Elia Kazan
Starring: Vivien Leigh, Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter, Karl Malden

Honors:
Academy Award for Best Actress
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
Academy Award for Best Art Direction (Black and White)
Best Film – New York Critic Film Circle
#45 AFI Top 100 (1998)
#47 AFI Top 100 (2007)
#67 AFI 100 Passions
#19 AFI 100 Scores
National Film Registry

A motion picture that helped alter the way films were produced in Hollywood, it lacked many of the usual studio system models. A non-studio director, non-studio technicians, and non-studio actors were brought together to create an in-house product instead of the common movie factory slapped together production model. Here movie audiences would experience the talent displayed on the Broadway stage, adapted with the intimacy and raw ferocity films in the most part lacked. Viewers would be introduced to young newcomer in Marlon Brando and a style of acting that revolutionize the art and the industry. A pinnacle moment in Hollywood motion picture history, although many time copied or parodied, this film remains honored as one of the greats of all time.

 

A Streetcar Named Desire is a drama about a southern belle who loses her grasp on reality as she moves in with her sister and her ruthless brother-in-law in the slums of New Orleans. Exiled from her small hometown, the delicate and neurotic Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh) arrives in New Orleans’ French Quarter with hope to find peace in the home of her loving and pregnant sister Stella (Kim Hunter). However, her brutish brother-in-law, Stanley (Marlon Brando), is immediately distrusting of Blanch and her illusionary world she describes to live in. A physically and emotionally abusive husband, Stanley becomes Blanche’s tormentor even as she begins to share a relationship with his friend Mitch (Karl Malden). However, the possible marriage is interrupted as Stanley discovers and reveals the sordid details of Blanche’s exile, further taking advantage of her frailty, sending Blanche into a full emotional breakdown send off to a mental hospital. The culmination of events makes Stella realize the full abuse Stanley has put upon her, and finally with their baby in hand leaves him.

 

As a motion picture that tries its best at possibly capturing every aspect of the original Tennessee Williams play, this production delivers a raw, visceral energy with it that stands out from the Hollywood pictures of the day. The cast provides an intimate series of performances that feels different from the usual Hollywood fluff acting of even the grittiest pictures seen to this point. It is evident how much the Actor’s Studio plays a role in portrayal of the characters outside of Vivien Leigh. Yet, with Leigh having the most Hollywood spotlight she fits well into her role as the emotionally tormented southern belle attempting to stay within the world that remains only in her mind. From acting, directing, music, and set decoration every inch of the picture is calculated to bring about emotion and serves to provide a benchmark in the cinematic community.

 

From the beginning Tennessee Williams’ Pulitzer Prize winning 1947 play “A Streetcar Named Desire” was an enigma for movie studios that wanted to adapt such a renowned Broadway success for the screen. Its story was believed impossible to produce as a film with subject matter including domestic abuse, rape, and homosexuality sure to be meet negativity of censors, as well as moral and religious groups. When Warner Bros. and Williams finally teamed up it was wished to deliver as much of the Broadway production to this adaptation. It too a great deal to convince the original stage director Elia Kazan to return to “Streetcar” after he felt he had done everything he could the story in the Braodway production. Of course, some of the script was rewritten to creatively skirt around the story’s more questionable subject matters, but the film was to be a go.

 

Most of the celebrated Broadway cast would reprise their roles for the adaptation including Actor Studio members Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter, and Karl Malden. In a business move Warners sought to cast Blanche with a more headlining name than the original Blanche’s Jessica Tandy, who won just about every major award for her performance, but was virtual unknown to movie audiences. Names like Olivia de Haviland and Bette Davis would be considered, but the decision would fall on Vivien Leigh who had successful portrayed Blanche in the London West End production of “Streetcar,” directed by her then husband Laurance Olivier. The veteran 37 year-old actress would a household name after winning the role of a lifetime as Scarlett O’Hara in 1939’s Gone with the Wind, bringing with her a massive headliner to the production.

 

With Leigh being the outsider of the group, production at first was troubling as the lead actress shared her issues with fellow castmates and director Elia Kazan as well. The star performer came from a different school of acting that initially clashed as she joined a group that had long worked together. With time the British actress found a friendly rapport with the Brando, Kazan, and the rest of the cast and crew as they came together to construct an outstanding ensemble performance for movie audiences. Leigh was light and delicate, with a quiet stubbornness. Brando is beastly and raw, with an energy that is visceral as Stanley. Hunter is sympathetic and frustrating as Stella, while Malden is sensitive and meek, with a fiery underbelly that only barely peaks its head out in Mitch.

 

The picture was shot almost entirely on the soundstages of Warner Bros., paralleling how the play took place completely in the apartment of Stella and Stanley. Only reworked scenes near the opening and closing of film were shot in New Orleans providing moments outside of the small-roomed set. The apartment set pieces were constructed with movable walls allowing Kazan to make the rooms smaller as the movie goes on, expressing the claustrophobic nature of Blanche’s emotions as tensions build between her and Stanley. Through the magic of movie making both Kazan and Tennessee Williams would come to highly enjoy this adaptation of the story over the original work, surprising both of how much more they were able to deliver with the story on screen.

 

One of the first jazz infused scores in movies would aid in the underlying life of each character as composer Alex North added to the psychological nature of the picture. His contribution earned the composer an Oscar nomination, one of two he had that year, and helped pave new ground in cinematic music composition.

 

As expected, even with Williams submitting the script before production, the film was met with censor issues leading to several cuts before release to meet Production Code approval. Despite these changes the film opened to critical and box office success, while decades later, in 1993, the altered scenes would be fully restored as originally intended. Nominated for ten Academy Awards, including the first time a film had a nomination in each acting category, the picture brought home four statues. This marked Leigh’s second Oscar, a companion to the award for Gone with the Wind, while both Kim Hunter and Karl Malden shared their own respective accolades that night. Despite not winning Best Picture, the film was honored by the New York Film Critics Circle for being the best of the year over the Gene Kelly musical An American in Paris.

 

The legacy that A Streetcar Named Desire left of Hollywood is very evident as acting and production styles were changing, especially in the embracing of rougher, grittier pictures such seen here. Streetcar is adored by the cinematic community, long considered one of the very best films of all time, as evident in numerous all-time lists of Hollywood pictures. Most enduring of all was the official introduction of Marlon Brando to audiences at large as his instinctual fashion of performing would come to change the dramatic landscape, adding new layers character portrayal. All this comes together to make Streetcar remain a living piece of cinema that continues to shape the minds of many filmmakers and thespians.