A Streetcar Named Desire (Original Director's Version)
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Movie Reviews of A Streetcar Named Desire (Original Director's Version)
Movie Review: A BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF THE SEAMY SIDE OF LIFE
Summary: 5 Stars
Tennessee Williams rightfully takes his place as one of the premier playwrights in the history of the American theater. The relentless turning out of high quality pieces (and other short literary expositions) on subjects that in an earlier day before the 1950's would have not found nearly so receptive an audience.
I saw the movie version of Streetcar long before I read the original play so that, of necessity, the role of Stanley on the page evokes the powerfully strong, sexual and primitive role performed by Marlon Brando and the equally powerful performance by Vivian Leigh as the coquettish down on her heels Blanche Dubois. There are however, important differences between the story line presented in the movie and in the original play version. Some of the more explicit graphically sexual scenes and latent homosexual allusions did not pass muster with the censors of the times. For one familiar with the story from the stage or theater it is well worth going back and reading the original play to get a feel for the tensions that remain unexplored in the other media.
A reading of the play also makes clear something is missing from the productions and that is the sense that the characters are sleepwalking through life with their own private illusions that prevent them each, in the final analysis, from having more than a surface understanding of the others in the claustrophobic little home they inhabit. Blanche will pay, and pay dearly, for not understanding Stanley better as she tries to live the illusion of a fallen, aging Southern Belle. In any case, whether on stage on the screen or on the page this is a great American classic.
Movie Review: The Kindness of Strangers
Summary: 5 Stars
"A Streetcar Named Desire"
The Kindness of Strangers
Amos Lassen and Cinema Pride
I have wanted to review this film for a long time and now that I am on vacation, I decided it was time for a New Orleans guy to try to have his say. I recently brought home the wonderful seven volume DVD set of "The Tennessee Williams Film Collection" and have been working my way through reacquainting myself with some of the greatest films ever made. I knew Williams when I lived in Louisiana and followed his career the best I could ad I must say that "Streetcar" is a masterpiece.
Set in the French Quarter of New Orleans during the years following WW II, "A Streetcar Named Desire" is the story of Blanche DuBois, a neurotic and fragile woman who is searching for a place in the world that she can call her own. Her past is not pretty--she has been exiled from her hometown for seducing a 17 year old student at the school where she taught. He suddenly appears at the home of her sister Stella and her husband Stanley stating that she is suffering from exhaustion. She has been beleaguered by financial calamities but Stanley is suspicious since some of the money that is gone also belongs to his wife and therefore himself. Stanley is a brute of a man and a panther. When he demands to see the bill of sale for the family plantation, Belle Reve, he defines his relationship with Blanche. They are in opposing camps and Stella is caught between the love of her sister and the love of her husband. When Blanche tries to help improve their relations, the animal in Stanley emerges and he is enraged. He deeply loves his wife but he is mystified by Blanche and is determined to teach her a lesson.
Blanche sees a way out of her troubles when she meets Mitch, a card playing pal of Stanley. Mitch reveres her but the rumors of her past begin to catch up to her and everything falls apart for Blanche.
The cast of the film is absolutely magic. Kim Hunter is Stella and she is magnificent. She is strong even though she is financially, sexually and emotionally tied to her husband and Stanley is somewhat emotionally dependent upon her. Stanley's performance is one of the best supporting roles ever seen on the screen and she acts with every nuance of her mid and body.
Vivien Leigh is a total revelation. When she spoke, I was mystified. She is a victim but everything but innocent. She charms, she touches, and she emotes with a wonderful presence. The sexual attraction between her ad Marlon Brando as Stanley is quite noticeable and despite all of her lies ad deceptions, I was drawn to her. She is the human condition--she is hidden ugliness from the past and emotional and sexual neediness as well as ordinary human weakness. Leigh's performance is brilliant but we must remember that it is the author who created the character. It is, however, Vivien Leigh who gives it life.
Brando as Stanley is magnificent with his breakthrough performance. His performance is without fault but this is Leigh's movie. Her Blanche is profound as she clings to a very flimsy fa?ade of respectability. When Leigh says she "wants magic" it is a cry from the very depth of the actress's feeling and when she says she has always "depended on the kindness of strangers', we want to hold out her hands and hearts to her.
The writing is some of the finest we have ever seen--the characters are beautifully written and their story s dutifully told. Their complexities are written into them but with subtlety so that they are never obvious or uninteresting.
Elia Kazan directed with a caution heretofore unseen on the screen. How he managed to get this movie made in the early 1950's is a mystery but we should be so thankful that he did. Of course, the homosexual subplot was played down but it is graphic in its violence to women and animal sexuality. It is a compelling movie because the characters are compelling and the way we see them. The film feels humid helping to play up the sexuality therein. The entire atmosphere is wonderful and mesmerizing.
"A Streetcar Named Desire" is nothing short of a great film in which everything works. It was a superb play which successfully made the transition to the screen because of a marvelous cast and outstanding direction. There is not much that I can say that has not been said already over and over again. Let it suffice for me to say, yet once again, that "Streetcar" is magnificent in every aspect and is a landmark film in the world of cinema.
Movie Review: Essential Brando in Williams' Hothouse Classic Of Delusions and Deceptions
Summary: 5 Stars
The unfiltered primacy of 27-year old Marlon Brando (in only his second film) cuts through the feverish, Baroque-style histrionics that define Tennessee Williams' near-poetic masterwork. Brando's mastery over the characterization of Stanley Kowalski comes from a precocious ability to undercut the testosterone-driven braggadocio with a rough-hewn sensitivity tied to Stanley's need for Stella. Directed on all cylinders by Elia Kazan, the 1951 adaptation of the Broadway hit has a somewhat stage-bound feel since most of the action takes place within the environs of the Kowalskis' downscale apartment building in New Orleans' French Quarter. However, screenwriter Oscar Saul seizes on the sexual themes of Williams' play and brings a refreshingly adult view to them (at least for the early 1950's), as Kazan guides the principal actors to powerhouse performances that demand our attention.
The relatively small-scale plot focuses on faded Southern belle Blanche DuBois, who comes to visit her younger sister Stella from Mississippi where she held onto a fantasy of gentility and respectability growing up on the family plantation, Belle Reve. Hoping for a safe haven in New Orleans, Blanche is disappointed to see that Stella has married Stanley, an unruly blue-collar worker. Conflict ensues almost immediately between Blanche and Stanley with Stella stuck in the middle. Gradually, Blanche's self-delusions peel away her sanity until a harrowing incident takes her over the edge. Even though Brando dominates every moment he has, Vivien Leigh affectingly counterpoints with one of her most definitive performances as Blanche, the true protagonist of the piece.
Intriguingly, 56 years later, the contrast between Leigh's florid, more ornately theatrical approach and Brando's fearlessly instinctual work comes across almost too extreme with the actress looking all the more pretentious by comparison. Only in the shattering climax do they truly seem on equal ground. The real surprise, especially in the now-unexpurgated version, is Kim Hunter, whose comparatively subtle performance as Stella maintains a delicate balance between supportive sister and lust-driven wife. In a marginally smaller role, Karl Malden is ideally cast as mama's boy Mitch, who gets caught up in Blanche's lies only to be victimized by them. Harry Stradling's evocative cinematography and especially Alex North's jazzy musical score add substantively to the atmosphere of the heady melodrama.
The two-disc 2006 DVD set is a treasure trove of extras. Even though it lacks a direct connection with the scenes, the commentary track provides historical context with tracks recorded separately with 94-year old Malden and film scholars Rudy Behlmer and Jeff Young. The first disc also includes a number of trailers for Kazan's classic films, including three just for "Streetcar". Disc two has an informative 75-minute 1994 documentary on the director, "Elia Kazan: A Director's Journey" and five featurettes focused on various aspects of the movie - its birth as a Broadway play, its translation to film, the struggles with censorship and the Hayes Office, North's music, and of course, Brando. There are rare outtakes included, though the best surprise is a four-minute screen test Brando did for Rebel Without a Cause.
Movie Review: Hollywood with the smell of theatre
Summary: 5 Stars
Probably those who were lucky enough to experience the first performances of Williams'masterpiece in the flesh (with Jessica Tandy as Blanche, for instance) are the only ones able to have a superior parameter to measure the play. For the rest of us, it is Elia Kazan's film.
We, viewers, are blessed that such an ensemble (Kazan, Brando, Leigh, Malden and Hunter) rescued forever one of the peaks of US literature.
For me, among its many virtues, the first and major is the magnificent confluence of the raising talent of Marlon Brando and the evening star of Vivien Leigh.
Movie Review: Watch how Brando steals the show
Summary: 5 Stars
Great Tennessee Williams play with many autobiographical ingredients. Fantastic acting from everybody. The story is meant to be about Blanche (Vivian Leigh), but Brando completely captivates the audience; it's hard to get one's eyes away from him. Steamy, sexually charged story, but also with a second side, less passionate, and hidden in the background. This other side of the story is actually the mystery that envelops the main character: Blanche. You will have to find out about her, if you don't fall under the spell of Brando (stanley), and eventually miss the original story.
The play develops as a very ambivalent convergence of visions: violent, rude and macho Stanley meets the dreamy and weak Blanche. They play their parts around the pivotal role of Blanche's sister, Stella (who could be also us, the audience). Of course, crude realism, animal instinct love, wins the day over any abstract considerations. But both sides have their ambivalences too. Blanche, as well as Stanley, are not clear cut characters. This convergence of opposites takes place in both of them as well. But that's what lies underneath, if one has interest enough to dig into them.
Elia Kazan did a great job creating the muggy and highly heated atmosphere of French Quarter New Orleans. Sets, music, direction... everything is perfect. One great film that feels like being at the theatre.
A lot of good extras come in the second dvd: Kazan's career documentary; a short about Brando; and extras about the Broadway show and the movie itself. Great package. Mandatory for any decent film collection.