A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE: Blu-ray reissue (Warner Bros. 1951) Warner Archive
One of a handful
of truly great plays in the American stagecraft, Tennessee Williams’ A
Streetcar Named Desire broke all the rules and taboos, clearing away the
cobwebs of clean-cut complacency from the Broadway theater in 1948 to introduce
its seething depiction of unrepentant animal magnetism and cold, calculating
aversion to middle-class morality. At a time when the emotional impact of
melodrama in live theater was slowly being eroded by the onslaught of charming
musicals from Jerome Kern, Rodgers and Hart, and later, Rodgers and Hammerstein,
‘Streetcar’ took a blunt stab at raw sexual passion, and, in
essence, created the first ripples of legit erotica, cruelly wed to a backstory
of abusive relationships and an underbelly of justly perverse emotional manipulations.
For sheer shock value, there was nothing to touch the moment when a drunken and
hulking Stanley Kowalski (incarnated on both the stage and screen by then
relative unknown, Marlon Brando) stripped off his sweaty undershirt, repeatedly
shouting ‘Stella!’ to woo his abused wife (Kim Hunter) back into his
beefy arms. The original Broadway production had been a pet project of Irene
Mayer Selznick who, by then, knew her own husband, producer, David O. was
having an affair with Jennifer Jones (then, married to actor, Robert Walker). So,
the ill-fated triangle in Streetcar, between the mentally
unstable and aging Southern belle, Blanch Dubois (Jessica Tandy on the stage,
Vivien Leigh in the movie) Stanley – who could barely tolerate her – and, Stella
likely was a web of tawdry intrigue to which Mayer could distinctly relate.
Mayer had hoped
to costar Margaret Sullivan and John Garfield in the play, but ‘settled’
on Tandy and Brando with Hunter and Karl Malden - as Mitch – in support. Aside:
Malden would also be hired to reprise his role in the movie version. In casting
Brando, Mayer made an executive decision that, at first, did not sit well with
Tennessee Williams, who had conceived Stanley Kowalski as a much older and
vicious man. Perhaps inspiringly so, Brando’s youth worked in his favor,
transforming the callous brute into a rather insidious, if unintentionally
cruel and arrogant cock of the walk. Opening night, A Streetcar Named Desire
literally brought down the house. Apart from the accolades heaped upon it by
the critics, Williams would be honored with the Pulitzer. In its initial run, Streetcar
would go on for 855 performances, with inevitable changes made to its cast: Uta
Hagen, replacing Jessica Tandy in the last year; Carmelita Pope (for Hunter)
and Anthony Quinn (for Brando). It stands to reason, especially in the good ole
days of Hollywood, that when a play is this successful, it would eventually
find its way to the screen. And so, in 1951, A Streetcar Named Desire
became a major motion picture. Interestingly, while Hollywood’s self-governing code
of censorship remained in full swing, much of the play’s erotically charged
situations were left unrestricted by its edicts. Even more remarkable, Jack L. Warner
chose to play a percentage, hiring all of the original cast, except Tandy, to
reprise their roles for posterity on celluloid.
Tennessee
Williams came aboard to collaborate with screenwriter, Oscar Saul and director,
Elia Kazan on the translation from stage to screen and found, much to his
delight, every care was being taken to ensure A Streetcar Named Desire
was as potently conceived for the movies as it had been handcrafted for maximum
effect on the stage. Despite its cleverly implied erotica, certain concessions
had to be made to accommodate Streetcar as a motion picture. For time
constraints, dialogue was either pruned or excised altogether. To avoid any
aspersions being cast, the real-life town of Laurel, Mississippi used in the
play as Blanche’s birthplace, was altered to the fictional ‘Auriol’ in its
stead. As for Williams’ backstory about Blanche’s husband – having committed
suicide after being discovered by his wife in a homosexual flagrante delicto –
the movie would make no mention of any of it, and merely drop the inference
that Blanche’s ‘scorn’ for her husband's ‘sensitive’ nature, had
caused him to take his own life. But the biggest alteration to the story came
at the end – Stella, finally electing to leave Stanley for good, blaming him
for her sister’s spiral into madness. In the play, Stella – distraught over Blanche’s
fate – nevertheless, allows her husband to console her. In the eleventh hour of
the editing process, Warner also acquiesced to several more changes, muting the
effect of several sequences, merely to satisfy the censors and avoid
condemnation by the National Legion of Decency. Aside: in 1993, these latter-day
trims were discovered in a Warner vault and restored to the movie – reissued as
an ‘original director’s cut’.
Kazan, who had
directed the Broadway stage production, and had now assumed the director’s
chair for the movie, intimately understood the material. In translating Streetcar
from stage to screen, Kazan made the fortuitous decision to shoot the
movie almost entirely in a close two-shot, filling the screen with Brando’s musculature
in virtually every scene in which he appears. Thus, Brando dominates the frame,
both physically, and, more importantly, with his powerhouse of a performance.
With few exceptions, Kazan refrained from ‘opening up’ the play. The bulk of
the movie still plays in the Kowalski’s cramped New Orleans’ apartment, with
brief respites to a nearby train station, bowling alley, a pier near a dance casino
and a machine factory. Most of these departures are used sparingly, and, in the
last act, omitted entirely to stress the constricting world in which Blanche
eventually loses her grip on reality. And, while Jessica Tandy’s absence has
ever-since been debated and oft lamented with sour grapes as Jack Warner’s
short-sightedness run amok, Vivien Leigh had played Blanche, albeit in the
London theater production. So, she came to the project well-versed. Moreover,
Leigh’s named above the title carried a certain cache with movie audiences
(everyone’s favorite Southern belle, Scarlett O’Hara – herein gone to seed)
that Tandy’s obscurity with film fans could never hope to rival then. And Leigh
was, in fact, the biggest name on the marquee in 1951; Brando, yet to make his
mark, with Hunter and Malden, mere appendages in terms of box office drawing
power. It is one of those Hollywood ironies that immediately following the
picture’s premiere, Brando’s would be the name on everyone’s lips; Leigh’s
performance – praise-worthy, yet somehow overshadowed by the buzz generated by
this brawny newcomer. Indeed, it seemed as though the whole world had turned
out for Streetcar, ringing registers and making it the 5th
highest grossing movie of the year. Meanwhile, Tinsel Town went gaga for
Brando, who would also be Oscar-nominated as Best Actor.
Tennessee
Williams’ great strength as a playwright, to critique mankind’s moral ambiguity,
with frankly illicit, if irreproachable topics was, at least in hindsight,
something of William’s debut in an ongoing and lifelong apology, meant to
address and come to terms with his own closeted homosexuality. As is often the
case with Williams stagecraft, ‘Streetcar’ was distinctly a case
of life imitated art. He had, in fact, based Blanche DuBois on his own sister
who struggled with crippling mental illness. Even as all references to Blanche’s
late husband, Allan Grey’s homosexuality were expunged from the film, Kazan and
Williams were able to cleverly skirt around the reasons for the suicide; also,
to do more than hint of Stanley’s rape of the mentally unstable Blanche after Stella,
suspecting as much, is admitted to hospital with premature labor pains. On
screen, the rape was evoked with Brando’s slow approach, his wide, half exposed
shoulders and back filling the frame as Blanche’s clenched fist shatters a
mirrored pane in the bedroom. Otherwise, Kazan and Oscar Saul remained
relatively faithful to the blunt force trauma in Williams’ original prose. As
in the play, we find a disorientated Blanche DuBois arriving at
the apartment of her sister, Stella. Unlike the play, Kazan, first gives us the
lay of the land first – the city of New Orleans, presented as a humid hotbed of
interaction. Blanche is first glimpsed at the railway depot, having just
arrived from Auriol Mississippi. Suffering heat exhaustion, Blanche stumbles
through the seedy ‘red light’ district in the French Quarter in search of the
apartment her sister, Stella shares with new husband, Stanley
Kowalski on Elysian Fields Ave.
Eventually
finding Stella inside a bowling alley, watching Stanley and his friends bowl,
Blanche confesses their ancestral home, Belle Reve, has been foreclosed and
sold for back taxes. Blanche, an English school teacher by trade, has been
permitted a leave of absence from the Spring semester after the strain over
losing her home became too great for her to bear. Stella accepts this explanation
for Blanche’s hasty and unannounced arrival in town. However, Stanley is not as
gullible. A primal urge courses through his body. Indeed, he is precisely the
sort of hulking brute who, by his own admission, has taken Stella off her
pedestal, by igniting her sexual desire. While Blanche refreshes herself in the
bathroom, Stanley tears through her steamer trunks, finding jewelry, furs and other
accoutrements he believes would be impossible for Blanche to afford on a teacher’s
salary. One aspect of Blanche’s emotional state is painfully transparent. She
has yet to recover from the suicide of her husband, Allan Grey – who shot
himself after she admonished him for his ‘general weakness’. Playing the part
of a genteel Southern belle from entirely another vintage, at first Blanche is
devilishly attracted to Stanley for the same reasons as her sister, while finding
Stella’s readiness to completely surrender to him morally repugnant,
particularly after she witnesses Stanley strike her pregnant sister with his
fists. Encouraging Stella to leave Stanley, Stella instead finds she cannot
resist Stanley’s pleas to return to him. Despite his terrible flaws, he is pure
animal magnetism.
Alas, Stanley’s
behavior will steadily evolve into a destructive pattern to infect all their
lives – his physical and emotional abuse, followed by bouts of congeniality
toward both his wife and Blanche. But behind this façade, Stanley has begun a
sinister quest; to rid himself of Blanche’s influence on Stella by destroying
her credibility in any way that he knows how. In the meantime, Blanche plots an
attachment to male wallflower, Harold Mitchell (Karl Malden), one of Stanley’s
poker buddies. ‘Mitch’ lives with his aged mother who is dying of an undisclosed
illness. He is genuinely kind to Blanche and affectionate at precisely this
moment when she desperately needs to rely on ‘the kindness of strangers’
to buttress her perilous decline into despair. Even as she hopes for Mitch to
save her from herself, Stanley has already unearthed several lurid details
about Blanche’s past from a co-worker who makes regular deliveries to Auriol.
Blanche did not take a leave of absence from teaching. She was fired by the
school after a sexual liaison with one of her 17-year-old pupils; later, revealed
as just one of many conquests she indulged in at a trashy motel on the
outskirts of town, well-known as a haven for sexual deviants. As the prime of her youth has long since passed,
and, her reputation is about to catch up to her, Blanche is exposed by Stanley
to Stella and Mitch as a shallow slut. Chagrined for having been deceived,
Mitch breaks off his engagement to Blanche. Stella goes into premature labor
and is rushed to hospital to deliver her baby. This leaves Stanley and Blanche
to pursue their toxic collision course alone.
Without Stella as
a buffer between them, Stanley is heartless and cruel beyond all human decency.
He confronts Blanche with the realization she is no longer welcome in his
house. He calls her out as a prostitute and then decides it is of no
consequence for him to take from her that which she willingly offered to so
many, but has coyly denied him ever since moving into his apartment. The rape, sends
Blanche over the edge of reason. In the days following Stella’s return to the
apartment with their infant son, Blanche becomes a fragile and shivering emotional
recluse, skulking in doorways and bathrooms, unable to look her sister in the
eye for fear she will learn the truth. With Stella’s complicity, Stanley
decides to have Blanche committed to an asylum. Knowing Stanley has raped
Blanche, and furthermore, that the rape is responsible for shattering Blanche’s
delicate state of mind, Mitch attacks Stanley, just as the institution’s
sympathetic doctor (Richard Garrick) has arrived to collect his new patient. Stanley
lies that he never touched Blanche. Alas, Stella now realizes the truth for
herself. She makes her husband take a solemn vow. He will never lay a hand on
her or her child again. Their marriage is over. The movie ends with Stella quietly
observing as the doctor escorts Blanche to a waiting wagon. Stanley hollers for
his wife to return to him. This time,
his cries going unacknowledged.
Seventy-one
years after its Broadway debut, A Streetcar Named Desire has lost none
of its dramatic potency. With the exception of two scenes, Kazan confines all
of his character’s confrontations to the cramped and pitiful squalor of Stella
and Stanley’s two-room apartment; a cinematic space generated by electrifying
dramatic claustrophobia. More than ever, our central protagonists are presented
as wild animals trapped together in a very tight little cage. Marlon Brando’s
tour de force performance pulsates with an uninhibited charisma that leans
heavily toward male machismo and a sadistic streak that is so completely
engrossing, that even as Stanley commits his most reviled acts – the rape, and
consequently ‘satisfying’ commitment of Blanche to an asylum – we cannot help
but find his Stanley Kowalski perversely fascinating. Vivien Leigh’s
counterpoint is a little harder to digest, perhaps due to her lack of genuine
empathy. Her Blanche is, at first, indulging
in a distorted game of deceptions. It remains in the last act, for the audience
to truly unearth the toll this depravity has taken on Blanche’s soul. And
herein, Leigh holds absolutely nothing back. Mitch’s big reveal of Blanche’s
weathered, terrorized and tear-stained visage, lit in the most unflattering
harsh light of a single bulb, exposes the darkness and fear Blanche has been
trying so desperately to conceal from the outside world. For its dramatic shift
in daring, few moments on the screen have ever rivaled this one.
Kim Hunter and
Karl Malden offer stellar support in what is essentially a clash of wills
between two destructive people out for blood. Elia Kazan keeps the narrative
tightly focused. There is not a lot of down time between Stanley and Blanche’s
fierce exchanges, but Hunter and Malden prove themselves perfect counterpoints
in the wake and calm between each volatile confrontation, varied in their
level-headed reason and, eventually, liberated by it, although otherwise
singularly cut from the same tragic mindset, having so easily allowed
themselves to be manipulated by these darker personalities they have chosen to
unequivocally love. Harry Stradling’s moodily lit, deep focus cinematography
creates a generally oppressive atmosphere, while Alex North’s bawdy/brassy
score plays up the cheap eroticism that motivates these feral beasts to bite
and claw at each other. Even with the blunt of film censorship clinging to its
poisonous charm, A Streetcar Named Desire remains a noxious blend of sin
and seduction, not easily dismissed. This is one potent, and very hard-hitting
American classic that has retained its ability to sting.
Warner Archive
is reissuing A Streetcar Named Desire to Blu-ray; the decision, questionable,
as the original digi-pack is still readily available online from Amazon sellers
and, for superficial reasons, is preferred over this single-disc reissue. Addressing
the obvious: there is NO upgrade in video mastering for this re-release. And
frankly, none is required because the initial Blu-ray was very solid. Apart
from a few instances of residual softness, most of the B&W image herein is
razor-sharp, sporting excellent contrast and a light smattering of indigenous film
grain accurately reproduced. So, no reason to complain. The DTS mono audio
shows off the bluesy riffs of Alex North’s impeccable underscore, while
dialogue is exceptionally crisp without ever becoming strident. Extras are all
imports from Warner’s 2-disc DVD release from 1997 and include the feature-length
documentary, Elia Kazan: A Filmmaker’s Journey, as well as comprehensive
featurettes on the making of the film, Alex North’s contributions, Tennessee
Williams prowess as the author of the play, the Broadway play, and Brando’s
exceptional performance. We also get screen tests, audio outtakes, an audio
commentary track from Karl Malden, Rudy Behlmer and Jeff Young, plus the film’s
original trailer. So, why do I prefer Warner’s old digipack to this reissue? Purely,
for the bling; a handsomely assembled booklet with glossy photos and superficially
assembled trivia. Bottom line: in either incarnation, very highly recommended.
FILM RATING (out
of 5 - 5 being the best)
4
VIDEO/AUDIO
3.5
EXTRAS
3.5
Comments