A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

Directed by Elia Kazan.
Starring Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando.

In a Nutshell: A Southern belle clashes with her family and descends into insanity.

A lot has been written over the years about Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski. There have been morally unsound characters in movies long before Stanley, but they have all been played with reservation and restraint. But Brando brought the Method-style in full focus with Stanley; drinking, hitting, yelling, and never backing down from his character’s irredeemable qualities. He doesn’t submit to a simian cartoon (despite what many of the film’s characters would say) but instead expresses his anguish as a man who cannot think to summon such dimensions. It is hardly hyperbole to say that screen acting today would be quite different were it not for Brando’s fearless commitment to Stanley.

But for all of Brando’s acting revolutionizing, the film still belongs to Vivien Leigh as the unglued Blanche Dubois. She’s painted to be just as likeable a protagonist as Stanley, but Leigh’s performance is one of great tragedy as the audience waits for her downfall to arrive. She’s as brittle as a dry twig but her constant attempts at reclaiming a normal life (or deluding all around her that she can) are heavy lifting for an actress. Her tailspin to insanity, laced with homophobic jeers, nymphomania and possible cradle robbing (much of which was restored in the latest, uncut version), is hypnotic and achingly poignant in Leigh’s hands. Particularly her scene where she tries to seduce a young paperboy, her voice barely hiding the sexual longing in her sad life. It straddles a line between depressing and tawdry, but Leigh never buries Blanche’s inner turmoil.

The current DVD release presents the film uncensored leaving in the extended rape scene and scenes that sexualized Stella, Blanche’s sister and Stanley’s wife (Kim Hunter). The original cut gave little understanding as to what would attract her to such a brute and keep the marriage held together. It cheapened her character for audiences, but is now presented as a fully fleshed out figure (despite all the abuse she suffers from Stanley). The sexuality between the characters heightens through the constant manipulation and doesn’t devalue the tension with too much bedroom dealing. It keeps the heat in Blanche and Stanley’s battle as sweltering now as it did in 1951. The film continues to remain an engrossing insight into adult sexuality and as enduring as Brando’s raw passion.