Review of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) by Toby J — 11 Apr 2010

Simmering over with intensity and astriction this is one of the best family in crisis films I have ever seen. Marlon Brando gives one of cinemas greatest performances as the brutal and primal Stanley Kowalski, it is a sultry and electrifiying portrayal and his engrossing conflicts with Viven Leigh as the mentally troubled Blanche DuBois are absorbing and tense.

Throughout the film Blanche is a character who persistently annoys both her relatives and the audience, through a series of persnickety and condesending ways. It rattles Stanley the most, who boils over on many occasions - beating his wife Stella (Kim Hunter), fighting his friend Mitch (An Oscar Winning Karl Malden) and smashing the radio.

It seems that these binary opposites will always be at loggerheads, until the final scene, which is of such harrowing magnitude, occurs. Stanley, bereft of Stella due to her pregnancy, plays mind games with the ever declining Blanche and then forces himself upon her.

I often find it a great skill for a director and writer to make a character so loathsome and abhorrent at the start of the film, only for the audience to feel pathos and empathy for them at the end. This is certainly the case for Blanche and as she silently leaves in the back of the car, the facade of Stanley and Stella's marriage looks to have taken its final toll on the ever forgiving wife, who leaves Stanley on his own.

Skillfully written and masterfully directed, A Streetcar Named Desire features an ensemble cast at the top of their game and a story not to be missed. This is one of cinema's treats laden with moral issues and sociological themes that remain as apparent now as they did back then.

A brusing, blistering hothouse of a movie.