Review of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) by Devon B — 05 Feb 2010

There actually is a streetcar named "Desire" in A Streetcar Named Desire. Blanche DuBois takes it to her sister's home on Elysian Fields Avenue in New Orleans. It's like something out of an Edgar Allen Poe story, Blanche tells her sister Stella of her and her husband's home.

Blanche first sees Stella's husband Stanley as he's starting a fight in a bowling alley. Blanche tells her sister she's on a temporary leave of absence from her teaching position as she's had something of a nervous breakdown.

Blanche has come to stay for an indeterminate amount of time to rest, but after seeing Stanley for the first time, she must realize she'll get very little peace. Stanley at first is merely put off by Blanche's sophisticated ways, seeing her as just another phony woman, but upon finding out she's lost the family estate, he begins to suspect her of devious deceit or worse, cheating him out of his share of some money.

Stanley is a brutal, angry man who only deals with things by force, whereas Blanche and Stella are the exact opposite, yielding to bellowing like branches in the wind (and obviously, this forcefulness of Stanley's, this opposition to her customary life, is exactly what attracted Stella to him in the first place).

But it can't be just the clash of social backgrounds that so drives Stanley to persecute Blanche (as he married a woman of the exact same background), there seems more to it. He clearly doesn't like the fact that she feels herself superior to him due to her higher education, but maybe more than that, he hates weakness in people.

Most of all, Stanley has zero empathy for anyone; he'll never know what Blanche suffered, nor will he ever care. His all consuming passion seems to be himself, whereas Blanche just seems to be trying to survive as best she can.

Playwright Tennessee Williams ("Cat on a Hot Tin Roof") has a knack for capturing the ugliness of humanity and this film is no exception. Honestly, there aren't too many redeeming characters in this film and the overall vision presented is that humans aren't much better than animals.

Director Elia Kazan would work with Marlon Brando and Karl Malden again a few years later with "On The Waterfront", a film about one man standing up against corruption for what he felt was right.

In A Streetcar Named Desire, Brando's character again stands up against corruption, but the motives seem far less noble. Good, bad or indifferent, Brando's early roles all seem to have a similar note to them.

Like Sylvester Stallone in Rocky, Brando's Stanley might be his greatest role. It's also quite something to watch Vivien Leigh's performance, as Blanche is slowly stripped of everything, including even the chance to dream, we watch her fragile shell crack and then shatter.