A Streetcar Named Desire review — a raw, passionate, and powerful drama

 

☆☆☆☆☆

Faded Southern Belle and virtuoso English teacher Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh) stays in the hot, cramped New Orleans apartment of her sister, Stella (Kim Hunter), and Stella's husband, Stanley Kowalski (Marlon Brando). Tensions soon rise between the unstable fantasist Blanche and her violent, uncouth brother-in-law.

Spoilers Ahead.

Elia Kazan's 1951 film adaptation of Tennessee Williams' play A Streetcar Named Desire portrays the darkly intense domestic setting of the Kowalski apartment with a complex mix of authenticity and theatrics, the themes of domestic abuse, trauma, alcoholism, sexuality, and mental illness seeping through as conflicts rise. It presents the characters very interestingly; their duality is in the spotlight. Blanche is endearing and pitiful, and at once manipulative and vain as well. Stanley is brutish, animalistic, but also highly intelligent and pragmatic. Stella herself, while an often passive and gentle victim of abuse, can be driven by an almost primal devotion and passion to her husband.

The juxtaposition between the characters is emphasised too. Between the two sisters, Stella is much more grounded, passive, and accepting of her circumstances, while Blanche is practically delusional and tearing at the seams, desperately trying to hold on to her former status as a Sothern Belle and to her youth. Stanley represents the New World; modern and brash and real, clashing directly with Blanche's classical fantasising.

This is Brando and Leigh's tour de force. Both of them bounce off of each other in such a natural way, and the acting is absolutely phenomenal. The pair, along with Kim Hunter, had played the characters before (Hunter and Brando were in the first ever production of Streetcar together in 1947, while Leigh was in the 1949 London production), and the film only further depicts how comfortable they seem in their roles. Oh, and forgive me for being uncouth, but Brando and Leigh looked stunning in this. Brando's characterisation of Stanley is just charged with sex appeal, and Leigh encapsulates Blanche's careful and classic beauty perfectly. I was absolutely starstruck by the two of them.

The film plays about a lot with the Hays Code, which strictly forbade any profanity and obscenity, as well as controlled what topics could be depicted on screen in the United States and how between 1930 (and then rigidly enforcing it in 1934) to 1968. The play dealt with a lot of the topics that the code deemed immoral or generally difficult to depict, including sex and homosexuality. There was no direct mention of Allan Grey's homosexuality and the fact that Blanche caught him in bed with an older man, so it had to be left to subtext. Stanley and Stella's sex after the fight between them in scene 3 stands on a sort of tight rope with the code; it never explicitly says it, but Stella is seen the morning after with a gleeful look on her face and no clothes (obviously covered by a blanket) says it all and would've been quite risky at the time. Blanche's rape is alluded to only by the shattering of the mirror at the end of scene 10 and the splurting hose at the beginning of the following scene, as well as a passing comment about Blanche's accusations and attempts to tell her sister. I think it's a really smart way of dancing around the depiction while also still portraying it metaphorically.

A Streetcar Named Desire is potent with electric performances of such depressing characters and sets the stage perfectly for the ongoing conflict with an intense claustrophobia and an unparalleled boldness.