Dir.: Elia Kazan; Cast: Vivien Leigh, Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter, Karl Malden; USA 1951, 127 min.
Elia Kazan (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn) transposes his Broadway production of Tennessee Williams’ play to the big screen, complete with the original cast of Marlon Brando (Kowalski), Kim Hunter (Stella DuBois) and Karl Malden (Mitch). But Jessica Tandy’s Blanche is played by Vivien Leigh, who had perfected her role in the London production directed by her then-husband Laurence Olivier.
The stagey confines are still palpable but the brilliance of the acting makes this soar to new heights thanks to smouldering chemistry from the trio. Stella’s lustful glances at her husband Stanley and hints of Blanche’s promiscuity (originally cut by the Hays-Code censorship) are now restored to sizzling effect .
Streetcar sees Southern Belle Blanche Dubois washed up on the streets after her wealthy Mississippi family falls on hard times. She hopes to find solace in New Orleans with her younger sister Stella and her husband Stanley Kowalski but the lovebirds are in no mood for a prima donna in their nest, and Blanche’s fragile emotional state sets the cat amongst the pigeons. Kazan and his co-writer Oscar Saul give full throttle to the family fallout, mining the melodrama to its full potential. In the sweltering heat of the Southern summer tempers flare and fists fly. It soon emerges that Blanche has an ugly secret: she has been sacked from her teaching post for seducing a minor. But it soon emerges that her first – much younger husband – committed suicide, and was most certainly homosexual. Blanche is not used to the squalid living conditions her sister now lives in, despite being in lust with Kowalski. Blanch finds him alluring but is appalled by his brutal, animalistic behaviour. But she soon meets Mitch and another chance for happiness is clearly on the cards. Mitch is a friend of Kowalski – but very much his opposite – he falls for her, but their marriage dreams soon evaporate after her brother in law spills the beans on her shady past. Blanche does her best to improve the shabby living conditions, but Kowalski becomes more and more antagonistic towards her and a physical assault leads to Blanche’s committal to psychiatric hospital, in really troubling scenes. In this version, Saul and Kazan formulate a new ending, showing Stella leaving her husband, with her new born baby.
Even by today‘s standards the unruly violence of Brando’s performance is startling. He stalks Blanche like a stone-age predator, pulling no punches in his cruel verbal and physical onslaught. Of all Williams’ Southern plays and film adaptions – The Glass Menagerie and Baby Doll – this is by far the most Gothic. The setting looks more like a prison than a flat, and Harry Stradling’s black-and-white photography conjures up images that conjure up Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. Whilst Stella and Stanley are down to earth characters living in their loved up social realism, Blanche is has the febrile delicacy of a young Miss Faversham, lost in her fairytale and caught between dream and reality. Some contemporary critics claim that Williams, who was gay, really intended to show Blanche as a drag queen, and Kowalski as a closet gay, continually over-playing the macho angle out of fear that his true sexual orientation would be discovered. But maybe this is just wishful thinking on their part. Good-looking Macho men still exist, but they are an endangered species. AS
OPENING AT BFI Southbank and CINEMAS UK-WIDE on 7 February 2020.