A Streetcar Named Desire (Original Director's Version) | Vivien Leigh, Marlon Brando

A Streetcar Named Desire (Original Director's Version) | Vivien Leigh, Marlon Brando | Emotional human drama in post war New Orleans

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A Streetcar Named ...

	A Streetcar Named Desire (Original Director's Version) Vivien Leigh, Marlon Brando Warner Home Video, 1997 average customer review:based on 121 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

ONE OF MARLON BRANDO'S GREATEST ROLES

This was the movie that introduced me to Marlon Brando, and it was one of his best performances ever! This movie was based on Tennessee William's play, and the cast was phenomenal! This is one of the best movies I've ever seen, and it made me love Marlon Brando.
Vivien Leigh's performance couldn't have been better. She should be remembered as a great actress-not just as Scarlett O'Hara.
Karl Malden gives a great performance as well-as usual!
All in all a superb film, and one of the best plays by Tennesse Williams (you should read the play as well)!

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Emotional human drama in post war New Orleans

Elia Kazan's marvelous adaptation of Tennessee Williams award winning play is enhanced with some truly impeccable acting performances. Amazingly Marlon Brando who cemented his place in cinematic history with his portrayal of the brutish, volatile and sensual lout Stanley Kowalski was the only main player denied an Academy Award. Vivien Leigh, Karl Malden and Kim Hunter all garnered Oscars for their roles.

Leigh playing neurotic and fading Southern belle Blanche Dubois arrives in New Orleans complete with her fragile disposition to stay with her nurturing sister Stella played by Kim Hunter in the seedy French Quarter of New Orleans. Blanche hiding a sordid past had been run out of Laurel, Mississippi, fired from her teaching position for having an affair with a 17 year old boy.

Blanche received a warm reception from Stella but then Stanley enters the scene. Brando's hackles are immediately raised when he learned than Blanche had mortgaged the family estate Belle Reve and frittered away the proceeds depriving Stella of her share. Although Stella and Stanley had an often violent relationship they were deeply in love. The inevitable clash between the coarse Stanley and the genteel Blanche drove a wedge into their relationship creating major histrionics.

Blanche desperately wanted to start her life anew and Stanley's buddy Mitch played by Karl Malden had potential to be her life preserver and possible husband. Stanley however informed Mitch of Blanche's shady past and those plans became aborted.

The inevitable climax occurred when the pregnant Stella rushed to the hospital to deliver leaving Stanley and Blanche alone in their tiny apartment. Stanley being Stanley successfully pushed Blanche over the edge with his actions, reducing her to a delusional shell of herself and needing to be institutionalized.

Kazan's choice of the sordid settings of the Kowalski's apartment certainly magnified the fall from grace suffered by the psychologically fragile Blanche. The curious choice of the name of the apartment Elysian Fields, the mythical resting place for the blameless dead, provided foreshadowing for the drama that was to unfold. The legendary acting performances chronicling a myriad of, at times, dysfunctional interpersonal relationships were an impressive sight to behold, richly deserving of all the accolades.

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Come Looking for Brando--Leave with the indelible Leigh

Yes, this is an iconic performance given by Brando as the loutish Stanley, who operates on a different level of sexual manipulation than the equally manipulative Blanche. They both know "Death--the opposite is desire" and the struggle to win is as riveting now as when the film was first shown.

But the audiences with whom I have seen this film have come to see the brutish Brando tear his T-sirt and cry Stella, but have all left discussing one of the greatest performances ever committed to film, that of the great Vivien Leigh.

She not only drifts out to madness is a sea of words, but she is alternately cruel and vulnerable as she does so. It is truly harrowing to watch this intelligent creature struggle so hard to find the salvation she seeks in this squalid New Orleans of the 50s.

Brando has claimed that Leigh was the perfect Blanche--and, as such-the film becomes about this tortured creature (whose very worst punisher is herself)perhaps more than the play ever was. The Pulitzer radio broadcast indicates that even the original Blanche (Jessica Tandy) was unable to make the Williams text as organic.

The new dvd edition promises a lot of extras and a glowing new transfer. It's about time that this great performance of Leigh's got all the right home video attention!

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True to Tennessee!

I'll keep it very simple! I'm a southern lit. freak and am often fairly critical of film adaptations of the classics, which tend to portray characters as one-dimensional beings. However, the Leigh-Brando adaptation of "Streetcar" is mesmerizing, and in my opinion, true to the intent of brilliant southern playwright Tennessee Williams, wonderfully depicting both the internal and external collide of two worlds--the idyllic and the realistic--and how one cannot flourish unless the other falters. Those who love southern literature as I do may find it interesting to compare and contrast the character development of Blanche to similar "fallen" Southern belles such as Mitchell's Scarlett O'Hara and Faulkner's Temple Drake. Overall, this film is a must for any Williams fan!

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A Juggernaut Named Brando

There are three reasons for watching "A Streetcar Named Desire": Brando. Brando. Brando.

Marlon Brando's bestial heat still flares off that black and white celluloid like the flashpots from the third row of a KISS concert. It is obvious why his work in this movie has been lauded, critiqued, dissected, imitated, codified and ultimately iconicized - it's absolutely astounding! To this day, few have captured that feral rawness and "natural-ness" that he exuded; an actor boldly pioneering a new style, a bravura "Method". The screen becomes all too two-dimensional when he is not onscreen.

On the other hand, Vivien Leigh's acting style, though lauded by film aficionados as a symbiotic, diametric marriage of intensity with Brando's, is just plain hard to watch and truthfully quite embarrassing at points.

For modern viewers, she cannot seem to "convince" with her old-school "presentational" style, clashing irreconcilably with Brando's "method".

The icy romance between Leigh and Karl Malden's character only serves to pound home the truth that sexual mores have moved too far from filmic 50s etiquette, to be in any way considered vital or even interesting to modern viewers, even though, for its day, much censorship was brought down upon "Streetcar". So we are left with an inordinate amount of yapping that Leigh inflicts on Malden; enough to make any man turn to drink, drugs, other women, other men, football, synchronized swimming or forsaking humanity and leaving for outer space like Chuck Heston in "Planet Of The Apes".

During Leigh's incessant rambles, strewn passim to illustrate her neuroticism, one continually wonders whether one is missing innuendo which was considered innuendo Back Then but which is now simply naivete, or whether there was any innuendo courted at all and it was as innocent and puling as it sounded. Ultimately, it is too taxing to pretend filmic sophistication and dissect character motivation - on a pure enjoyment level, Leigh delivers only to historians and Serious Critics.

Surely, 'The Play's The Thing' and the story is as vital now as it was then (that of the estranged sister - Leigh - with the profligate and promiscuous past attempting to excise her demons by immersing herself in a new life with her sister and brother-in-law - Kim Hunter and Brando), but the manner in which this tale is purveyed has dated, the only vital remaining aspect being Brando. Brando. Brando.

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