I could never have guessed what the title meant. It is used only once in the film, right at the beginning. But when Blanche DuBois takes ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ to visit her sister and her husband, little does she know that her already unsteady life tottering on the edge, would be thrown off it.
The film is an adaptation of a Tennessee Williams play of the same name and like other Williams’ plays, notably like ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’, this is set in the steamy south, in closed environs and with characters that are seeking something to complete their lives. In ‘Cat on a..’, the setting boils as a crumbling family tries hard to find the right succession plan with the tensions between parent and child, sibling and sibling and husband and wife thrown in for flavor.
In ‘A Streetcar..’, Blanche is a woman who lacks love, a woman who has cared for her family, but has not found someone except for the countless men who have enjoyed and left her. Her nemesis turns out to be Stanley Kowalski, an impish man-child who is married to her sister.Blanche is desperately trying to move away from her painful past to find normalcy. Her methods are not refined and her manner suspicious. Her mental state is fragile.
Kowalski is onto her, figures that there is more to her than meets the eye, but does not relate to the fundamental nature, the purity of what she is seeking. She had not endeared herself to him. She saw him as an unrefined bully of a man who was no good for her sister, a view jaundiced by the sophisticated yet hollow company she was used to, but not too far from the truth as the bully hits her sister as much as he loves her. He proceeds to expose her and the plot tries to unravel whether his methods succeed or are they the final trampling of her desire for love, for life.
Williams co-wrote the screenplay with Oscar Saul and creates a suffocating atmosphere, almost like a cage where Kowalski teases and taunts Blanche. Elia Kazan, who three years later went on to give us On the Waterfront, brings to life these troubled characters in the most gripping manner with four Academy award nominated actors, three of whom won for this film. Marlon Brando is a beast, oozing raw sexuality and fire as though a volcano was erupting inside. His performance is stupendous to say the least and operates in that rare space where you don’t know whether to love or hate that character.
He is however eclipsed by the outstanding Vivian Leigh, a fading beauty, slowly losing her grip on life and over herself. The sadness and the madness in her eyes stays with you long after. Karl Malden as Kowalski’s best friend, who tries to make a life with Blanche is intense as a lonely man looking to find someone to fill the void soon to be left in his life by his ailing mother.
Watch ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ for it showcases the cruelty that is saved for some lives, as they hurtle towards their inevitable climax, and the people and the means that finally do them in.
