SYNOPSIS

Blanche DuBois is an aging schoolteacher who leaves her hometown under mysterious circumstances and stays with her pregnant sister Stella in New Orleans. Stanley Kowalski, Stella's brutish husband, resents Blanche's presence and accuses her of squandering the family inheritance. He soon sets about tearing down the fragile world of illusion with which Blanche attempts to surround herself.

Director: Elia Kazan
Producer: Charles K. Feldman
S creenplay: Tennessee Williams, Oscar Saul
Cinematography: Harry Stradling
A rt Direction: Richard Day (Oscar winner)
Set Decoration: George James Hopkins
Music: Alex North
Cast: Vivien Leigh (Blanche DuBois), Marlon Brando (Stanley Kowalski), Kim Hunter (Stella), Karl Malden (Mitch), Rudy Bond (Steve Hubbell), Nick Dennis (Pablo Gonzales).
BW-125m.

Why A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE Is Essential

Although The Glass Menagerie (1950) was William's first commercial success, A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) became his signature play, full of visceral emotion and unnerving tragic realism. It earned Williams' his first Pulitzer Prize and the first of four New York Drama Critics Circle Awards. In the stage version directed by Elia Kazan, Jessica Tandy played Blanche DuBois, Kim Hunter was Stella, and Marlon Brando became the talk of Broadway for his performance as the primal Stanley Kowalski. The major principals and the same director were also recruited for the movie version with the exception of Tandy. Her coveted stage role of Blanche went instead to Vivien Leigh, who had starred in a London production of the play directed by her husband, Laurence Olivier.

During the filming of A Streetcar Named Desire, Vivien Leigh clashed with Elia Kazan over her interpretation of Blanche and also had problems connecting with her fellow cast members who were trained in the "Stanislavsky Method." At the time, Leigh's relationship with her husband was also starting to unravel and her immersion into the role of Blanche only accented her current manic-depressive state. "In many ways she was Blanche," Brando said in his autobiography, Brando: Songs My Mother Taught Me. "She was memorably beautiful, one of the great beauties of the screen, but she was also vulnerable, and her own life had been very much like that of Tennessee's wounded butterfly...Like Blanche, she slept with almost everybody and was beginning to dissolve mentally and to fray at the ends physically. I might have given her a tumble if it hadn't been for Larry Olivier."

While in production, Streetcar began to encounter resistance from the film industry's self-regulating Production Code office. References to the homosexuality of Blanche's deceased husband were removed and the harsh original ending was altered, with Stella rejecting her husband rather than remaining by his side. Still, the film encountered controversy during its release and Warner Brothers deleted an additional five minutes of material (it was later added back in a 1993 restoration) which included dialogue references to Blanche's past promiscuity and visual evidence of the lustful relationship between Stanley and Stella.

A Streetcar Named Desire also deserves another footnote in Hollywood history because of its revolutionary mode of production. While Hollywood filmmaking was still firmly entrenched in the studio system which used only studio-contracted actors and craftsmen, A Streetcar Named Desire turned out to be a harbinger of things to come. Independent agent-producer Charles Feldman purchased the property and brought it to Jack L. Warner, the head of Warner Bros. Studios. Independent director Elia Kazan was brought on board to direct, and playwright Tennessee Williams adapted his own work to the screen. Furthermore, none of the cast members were Warner contract players, and only a few crewmembers came from outside of Warner Bros. This film put one more crack in the studio system's ironclad hold on filmmaking in America, leading to even more power for independent producers and smaller filmmaking companies.

All the trouble was worth it in the end because A Streetcar Named Desire is now considered a landmark film in terms of the ensemble performances, Kazan's direction and the evocative art direction by Richard Day. The derelict New Orleans tenement is given a convincing presence through the accumulation of details such as crumbling stucco and bricks, peeling wallpaper, streaks of dirt on the walls and the dramatic courtyard staircase with wrought iron railings. In collaboration with Harry Stradling's evocative textures of light and shadow, the sets provide crucial atmospheric support for the actors' naturalistic performances. Academy Awards for the film included Best Actress (Leigh), Best Art Direction (Richard Day and George James Hopkins), Best Supporting Actor and Actress (Karl Malden and Kim Hunter); nominations included Best Actor (Brando), Best Director (Kazan), Best Original Screenplay (Williams) and Best Score (Alex North).

by Scott McGee & James Steffin