A Streetcar Named Desire | |
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Directed by | Elia Kazan |
Screenplay by |
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Based on | A Streetcar Named Desire 1947 play by Tennessee Williams |
Produced by | Charles K. Feldman |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Harry Stradling |
Edited by | David Weisbart |
Music by | Alex North |
Distributed by | Warner Bros. Pictures |
Release date |
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Running time | 125 minutes [2] |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $1.8 million [3] |
Box office | $8 million (North America) [3] |
A Streetcar Named Desire is a 1951 American Southern Gothic drama film adapted from Tennessee Williams's Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name. It is directed by Elia Kazan, and stars Vivien Leigh, Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter, and Karl Malden. The film tells the story of a Mississippi Southern belle, Blanche DuBois (Leigh), who, after encountering a series of personal losses, seeks refuge with her sister (Hunter) and brother-in-law (Brando) in a dilapidated New Orleans apartment building. The original Broadway production and cast was converted to film, albeit with several changes and sanitizations related to censorship.
Tennessee Williams collaborated with Oscar Saul and Elia Kazan on the screenplay. Kazan, who directed the Broadway stage production, also directed the black-and-white film. Brando, Hunter, and Malden all reprised their original Broadway roles. Although Jessica Tandy originated the role of Blanche DuBois on Broadway, Vivien Leigh, who had appeared in the London theatre production, was cast in the film adaptation for her star power. [4] The film brought Brando, previously virtually unknown, to prominence as a major Hollywood film star, and earned him the first of four consecutive Academy Award nominations for Best Actor; Leigh won her second Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Blanche. It received Oscar nominations in ten other categories (including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay), and won Best Supporting Actor (Malden), Best Supporting Actress (Hunter), and Best Art Direction (Richard Day, George James Hopkins), making it the first film to win in three of the acting categories.
The film earned an estimated $4,250,000 at the US and Canadian box office in 1951, making it the fifth biggest hit of the year. [5] In 1999, A Streetcar Named Desire was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Blanche DuBois, a middle-aged high school English teacher from Auriol, Mississippi, arrives in New Orleans. She takes a streetcar named "Desire" [6] to the French Quarter, where her sister Stella and Stella's husband Stanley Kowalski live in a small, dilapidated tenement apartment. Blanche claims to be on leave from her job due to anxiety. Blanche's demure manner is a stark contrast to Stanley's crude behavior, making them mutually wary and antagonistic. Stella welcomes having her sister as a guest, but Stanley patronizes and criticizes her.
Blanche reveals that the DuBois family estate, Belle Reve, was lost to creditors. She was widowed at a young age after her husband's suicide. When Stanley suspects Blanche may be hiding an inheritance, she shows him proof of the foreclosure. Looking for further proof, he knocks some of Blanche's private papers to the floor. Weeping, she gathers them, saying they are poems from her dead husband; Stanley explains he was only looking out for his family, and then announces that Stella is pregnant.
Blanche meets Stanley's friend Mitch, whose courteous manner and sensitivity is in sharp contrast to Stanley and his other friends, and the two fall in love. During a poker night with his friends, Stanley explodes in a drunken rage, striking Stella; Blanche and Stella flee upstairs to neighbor Eunice Hubbell's apartment. After his anger subsides, Stanley remorsefully bellows for Stella from the courtyard below. Stella is drawn downstairs by her attraction to Stanley, and they go to bed together. The next morning, Blanche urges Stella to leave Stanley, calling him a sub-human animal.
As weeks pass into months, tension mounts between Blanche and Stanley. Blanche is hopeful about Mitch, but anxiety and alcoholism have her teetering on mental collapse while anticipating a marriage proposal. Meanwhile, Stanley discovers that Blanche had been fired for sleeping with an underage student. He passes this news on to Mitch. Stella angrily blames Stanley for this catastrophic revelation, but their fight is interrupted when she goes into labor.
Later, Mitch arrives and confronts Blanche about Stanley's claims. She pleads for forgiveness, but Mitch, hurt and humiliated, ends their relationship. Later that night, while Stella's labor continues, Stanley returns from the hospital to sleep. Dressed in a tattered gown, Blanche pretends she is departing on a cruise with an old admirer. Stanley admonishes her for lying about her past and mistreating him; the two fight and it is implied that he rapes her.
Weeks later, during another poker game at the apartment, doctors arrive to take the nearly catatonic Blanche to a mental hospital. Blanche has told Stella what happened, but Stella cannot bring herself to believe it. On seeing the doctor and nurse, Blanche resists at first, but the doctor talks to her gently and she goes with them willingly, saying that she has "always depended on the kindness of strangers". As Blanche is led away, Mitch tries to attack Stanley but is pulled away by the other poker players. Realizing that Blanche had told her the truth, Stella takes her baby upstairs to the Hubbells' apartment, determined to leave Stanley.
A Streetcar Named Desire was adapted directly from the successful 1947 Broadway production of the play, which won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Many of the cast and crew were ported over from the stage production, including director Elia Kazan and actors Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter, Karl Malden, Rudy Bond, Nick Dennis, Peg Hillias, Ann Dere, Edna Thomas, and Richard Garrick. Kazan intended for Jessica Tandy, who won a Tony for her portrayal of Blanche, to also reprise her role on film, but producer Charles K. Feldman insisted on casting an actress with more box office appeal. The role was offered to both Bette Davis [7] and Olivia de Havilland, who both declined. Vivien Leigh, who had already played Blanche in Streetcar's London production (directed by then-husband Laurence Olivier), was eventually cast. In Brando's autobiography, he praised Tandy but felt that Leigh "was Blanche."
Aside from the opening and closing scenes, which were shot on location in New Orleans, A Streetcar Named Desire was filmed entirely on soundstages at the Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California. The Kowalski apartment was designed to gradually appear smaller over the course of the film, in order to reflect tension between the characters.
For the opening scene, #922 was chosen to be the streetcar that dropped off Blanche. As of 2022, this streetcar was still in service on the St. Charles Streetcar Line. [8]
Marlon Brando is often displayed shirtless, in one of the first occurrences for a Hollywood movie. [9]
Several scenes were cut after filming was completed in order for the film to conform to the Hays Code and avoid condemnation by the National Legion of Decency. In 1993, after Warner Bros. rediscovered the censored footage during a routine inventory of archives, [10] several minutes were restored in an 'original director's version' video re-release. [11]
The jazz-infused score by Alex North was written in short cues that reflected the psychological dynamics of the characters. It was one of the first jazz scores composed for a mainstream feature film, and earned North an Oscar nomination for Best Original Score. [12]
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In the months after its release in September 1951, A Streetcar Named Desire grossed $4.2 million in the United States and Canada, with 15 million tickets sold against a production budget of $1.8 million. [14] A reissue of the film by 20th Century Fox in 1958 grossed an additional $700,000. [15]
Upon release, the film drew very high praise. The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther stated that "inner torments are seldom projected with such sensitivity and clarity on the screen" and commending both Vivien Leigh's and Marlon Brando's performances. Film critic Roger Ebert has also expressed praise for the film, calling it a "great ensemble of the movies." The film has a 97% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 62 reviews, with an average rating of 8.60/10. The consensus reads, "A feverish rendition of a heart-rending story, A Streetcar Named Desire gives Tennessee Williams's stage play explosive power on the screen thanks to Elia Kazan's searing direction and a sterling ensemble at the peak of their craft." [16]
In his 2020 autobiography Apropos of Nothing , director Woody Allen praised the film:
The movie Streetcar is for me total artistic perfection... It's the most perfect confluence of script, performance, and direction I’ve ever seen. I agree with Richard Schickel, who calls the play perfect. The characters are so perfectly written, every nuance, every instinct, every line of dialogue is the best choice of all those available in the known universe. All the performances are sensational. Vivien Leigh is incomparable, more real and vivid than real people I know. And Marlon Brando was a living poem. He was an actor who came on the scene and changed the history of acting. The magic, the setting, New Orleans, the French Quarter, the rainy humid afternoons, the poker night. Artistic genius, no holds barred.
The Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa cited this movie as one of his 100 favorite films. [17]
A Streetcar Named Desire won 4 Academy Awards, setting an Oscar record when it became the first film to win in three of the acting categories, a feat subsequently matched by Network in 1976 and Everything Everywhere All at Once in 2022. [18] [19] It was also the first time since 1936 ( Anthony Adverse ) that a Warner Bros. movie won four or more Oscars.
American Film Institute recognition
Marlon Brando Jr. was an American actor. Widely regarded as one of the greatest cinema actors of the 20th century, Brando received numerous accolades throughout his career, which spanned six decades, including two Academy Awards, three British Academy Film Awards, a Cannes Film Festival Award, two Golden Globe Awards, and a Primetime Emmy Award. Brando is credited with being one of the first actors to bring the Stanislavski system of acting and method acting to mainstream audiences.
Vivien Leigh, styled as Lady Olivier after 1947, was a British actress. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress twice, for her performances as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939) and Blanche DuBois in the film version of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), a role she had also played on stage in London's West End in 1949. She also won a Tony Award for her work in the Broadway musical version of Tovarich (1963). Although her career had periods of inactivity, in 1999 the American Film Institute ranked Leigh as the 16th-greatest female movie star of classic Hollywood cinema.
On the Waterfront is a 1954 American crime drama film, directed by Elia Kazan and written by Budd Schulberg. It stars Marlon Brando, and features Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Rod Steiger, Pat Henning and Eva Marie Saint in her film debut. The musical score was composed by Leonard Bernstein. The black-and-white film was inspired by "Crime on the Waterfront" by Malcolm Johnson, a series of articles published in November–December 1948 in the New York Sun which won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting, but the screenplay by Budd Schulberg is directly based on his own original story. The film focuses on union violence and corruption among longshoremen, while detailing widespread corruption, extortion, and racketeering on the waterfronts of Hoboken, New Jersey.
A Streetcar Named Desire is a play written by Tennessee Williams and first performed on Broadway on December 3, 1947. The play dramatizes the experiences of Blanche DuBois, a former Southern belle who, after encountering a series of personal losses, leaves her once-prosperous situation to move into a shabby apartment in New Orleans rented by her younger sister Stella and brother-in-law Stanley.
Kim Hunter was an American theatre, film, and television actress. She achieved prominence for portraying Stella Kowalski in the original production of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, which she reprised for the 1951 film adaptation, and won both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Karl Malden was an American stage, movie and television actor who first achieved acclaim in the original Broadway productions of Arthur Miller's All My Sons and Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire in 1946 and 1947. Recreating the role of Mitch in the 1951 film of Streetcar, he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Stanley Kowalski is a fictional character in Tennessee Williams' play A Streetcar Named Desire.
Blanche DuBois is a fictional character in Tennessee Williams' 1947 Pulitzer Prize-winning play A Streetcar Named Desire. The character was written for Tallulah Bankhead and made popular to later audiences with Elia Kazan's 1951 film adaptation of Williams' play; A Streetcar Named Desire, starring Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando.
Jocelyn Brando was an American actress, best known for her role as Katie Bannion in the film noir The Big Heat (1953). She was the sister of Marlon Brando.
British actress Vivien Leigh (1913–1967) was born in Darjeeling, India; her family returned to England when she was six years old. In addition to her British schooling, she was also educated in France, Italy, and Germany, and became multilingual. Classically trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, her film debut was in an uncredited role in the 1935 comedy Things Are Looking Up.
Stella Kowalski is one of the main characters in Tennessee Williams' play A Streetcar Named Desire. She is the younger sister of central character Blanche DuBois and wife of Stanley Kowalski.
A Streetcar Named Desire is an opera composed by André Previn in 1995 with a libretto by Philip Littell. It is based on the play of the same name by Tennessee Williams.
A Streetcar Named Desire is a 1947 play by Tennessee Williams.
A Streetcar Named Desire is a 1995 American drama television film produced and directed by Glenn Jordan and starring Alec Baldwin, Jessica Lange, John Goodman, and Diane Lane. It aired on CBS on October 29, 1995. Based on the 1947 play by Tennessee Williams, it follows a 1951 adaptation starring Marlon Brando and a 1984 television adaptation. The film was adapted from a 1992 Broadway revival of the play, also starring Baldwin and Lange.
A Streetcar Named Desire is a 1984 American TV movie directed by John Erman and based on the 1947 play of the same name by Tennessee Williams. The film stars Ann-Margret and Treat Williams and premiered on ABC on March 4, 1984.
Marlon Brando was an American actor and considered one of the most influential actors of the 20th century.
Truckline Cafe was the title of a 1946 Broadway play written by Maxwell Anderson, directed by Harold Clurman, produced by Elia Kazan, and starring Marlon Brando and Karl Malden. The short-lived play ran only 10 performances and is best remembered today for the fact that each night Brando would run up and down a flight of stairs prior to an entrance to induce an effectively frenzied demeanor for one of the scenes. The cast also included David Manners, to whom Brando has attributed much of his subsequent success, and Kevin McCarthy. The play is noted for Brando's first major appearance on Broadway, during which he garnered attention for an unusually intense performance which presaged his later work on A Streetcar Named Desire. Truckline Cafe is also notable for being the first collaboration between Brando and Kazan, who later made A Streetcar Named Desire, Viva Zapata, and On the Waterfront together. The play also remains notable for being the first time Brando and Malden worked together, prior to co-starring in A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, and One Eyed Jacks.
Margaret "Peg" Hillias was an American actress of stage, film and television.
Carmelita Pope was an American actress of stage and screen.