233. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

Directed By Elia Kazan


Synopsis

Blanche goes to New Orleans to visit her sister. Her sister lives with Marlon Brando, that's a surprise! I thought he was dead. A good time is had by all.

Review

It is actually quite interesting how the simple changing of a decade marked such a difference in film, films are much more willing to push the production code to its limits, and you can't push it much more than here.

Maybe this film had some kind of exception made as it was an adaptation of a theatre work, but even so it manages to imply, rather than show many things that Production code people would not have loved.

One of the most present of these is the sexual desire that arises from violence, and Brand just embodies the whole thing, he is an asshole but a sexy asshole. Blanche is damaged beyond repair to the point that she is intensely annoying, in what is a great performance by Vivien Leigh, but still she falls just short of deserving her end, letting you empathise with a character that at first look might seem double-faced and pretentious, but is in the end one of the more accurate portrayals of a woman with no self-confidence in the history of cinema. Another great film...

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

In 1993, the film was re-released with the cut scenes restored, and this is the version available on VHS and DVD. The restored scenes include the following:


* Stella says "Stanley's always smashed things. Why, on our wedding night, as soon as we came in here, he snatched off one of my slippers and rushed about the place smashing the light bulbs with it...I was sort of thrilled by it."

* The dialogue makes it clearer that Blanche's husband was a homosexual and that she made him commit suicide with her insults.

* Blanche's line explaining that she wants to kiss the paperboy "softly, sweetly" now has the words "...on the mouth" at the end.

* When Stella takes refuge upstairs after Stanley punches her, her emotions are made clear as she is shown in close up, her face blank with desire.

* Stanley's line "Maybe you wouldn't be so bad to interfere with." and the resulting rape scene.

Stelaaaahhhh: