Throwback Movie Night: A Streetcar Named Desire

I wasn't sure if I'd like "A Streetcar Named Desire" because I don't really like Vivien Leigh. This movie is based upon the 1947 Pulitzer Prize winning play by Tennessee Williams. It was a super successful play and Marlon Brando acted as Stanley on the stage and then transitioned his portrayal of the character to the silver screen in 1951. In case you've never heard of it, the story is not about a streetcar. The story begins with Blanche DuBois (played by Vivian Leigh), a former English teacher, arriving at the French Quarter in New Orleans to stay with her sister, Stella. Blanche is bringing the news that she's lost the DuBois family home in Mississippi and she's taken a break from her teaching job because she's had a nervous breakdown. Stella's husband, Stanley (enter: Marlon Brando), is a rough (to say the least) sort of guy. Blanche, despite not having a family home and being thirty years old and unwed, still holds fast to the southern belle culture and is taken aback by her sister's husband. Both are strong personalities and the two end up on a collision course that you can tell is coming through the entire movie. (This house ain't big enough fer the two of us, kind of thing...) Stanley is not convinced that the DuBois family home was 'lost' and is sure that Blanche has cheated Stella and him out of money. In his snooping around, he uncovers more than a lost inheritance. The short stay of Blanche's turns into months and the relationships of all three become more strained than ever. Blanche's past comes back to haunt all three of them and leads to one of the most dramatic scenes (in a movie full of drama), when Stanley rapes Blanche and then commits her to a mental institution.

How's that for an ending?

For someone who doesn't like Vivien Leigh, I really thought she did a good job in this movie. By the end, I was sympathetic to her character. I thought she was much better in this movie than she was in "Gone With the Wind", and she did win the Oscar for this performance. This movie won three out of the four main acting Oscar awards that year, Marlon Brando being the only one of the four main characters to not win. Marlon Brando is great in this movie, too, but I'm sure I missed some words of his while trying to decipher his seriously slurred speech pattern.  The constant pessimism and strife of Tennessee Williams' writing, mixed with the dreariness of the setting makes for a rather depressing movie, but the story was good and I really didn't see the ending coming. It completely held my interest.

The thing that everyone remembers after watching this is Marlon Brando's desperate bellowing of 'STELLLAAAAA'.  All together now:




Incidentally, the 'STELLLAAAA' bellow is so well-known, that each year in New Orleans there is a Stella/Stanley shout-off. An actor stands on a balcony in Jackson Square and the contestants take turns screaming 'STELLLLAAAA' (men) and 'STAAAAANLEEEY' (women) at the actor from below. Not surprisingly, the top three winners each get a case of beer.