MUST-SEE MOVIES: A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (1951)

*****

12A, 125 Mins

A very personal role for Vivien Leigh.

I’ve been meaning to do a “must-see” movies section on my website for ages; reviewing classics old and new and crushing and musing over Hollywood’s greatest golden icons. 

I actually had a “must-see” section before, about 2 years ago on the blog. I had reviews of ‘Leaving Las Vegas’ (1995), ‘Taxi Driver’ (1976) and ‘Fight Club’ (1999) amongst others. Anyway I thought I’d get back into it and give you a classic movie recommendation which we all need considering the cinemas are likely to be closed until next summer.

Elia Kazan’s 1951 film adaptation of Tennessee Williams’s Pulitzer-winning 1947 play of the same name is a favourite of mine for a number of reasons, but mostly for Vivien Leigh. I think Vivien Leigh is arguably the greatest actress of all time - not just because I fancy her like hell, but because she delivered arguably the most iconic line in arguably the most iconic film of all time - in ‘Gone with the Wind’ (1939) when she holds up Tara’s soil in front of the setting sun, glistening against her beauty, and screams “as God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again!”.

Leigh is brilliant here in a very different and rather more tragic role than spoilt, bratty Scarlett O’Hara. She’s still playing a southern belle, but her character here - Blanche DuBois - is blonde rather than black-haired and really taps into Leigh’s well-documented struggles with mental illness in the run-up to her tragic and untimely death in 1967.

Blanche here is an aristocratic school English teacher who has decided to move to New Orleans to live with her less wealthy sister Stella (Kim Hunter) and her unruly, heavy-drinking husband Stanley (a breakthrough role for Marlon Brando). The film gets its title “a streetcar named desire” as this is the vehicle Blanche takes to travel to New Orleans’s French Quarter where Stella and Stanley’s decrepit old house is based.

Blanche regularly witnesses the effects of Stanley’s alcoholism on his wife. He subjects Stella to several beatings and does the same to Blanche too (along with something even more extreme). Stanley is a bitter, cruel man frothing with testosterone-fuelled sexual jealousy and false ideas that his wife is cheating on him.

Meanwhile Blanche finds solace in one of Stanley’s friends named Mitch (Karl Malden) who is a lot softer than most of Stanley’s bunch. They begin dating and Mitch eventually wants Blanche to be his wife.

Leigh won her 2nd Oscar for this movie and you can see why. It’s not quite as glamorous a role as playing Scarlett O’Hara in ‘Gone with the Wind’, but a much more personal and challenging one as, later in the film, Blanche regresses into a psychotic state with the suggestion that Stanley might have raped her. Those who know their Vivien Leigh history will know she suffered from Bipolar Disorder for most of her adult life and so clearly identified and related to the mental illness Blanche here develops in the aftermath of the rape.

Excluding a role in Fred Zinnemann’s ‘The Men’ (1950), this film was Marlon Brando’s first starring role and he really makes an impression in ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’. He’s brilliant here as the grizzled, muscled, badmouth bad husband and really made me believe and hate him considering the atrocious acts he commits against women in this movie.

The relationship between Blanche and Karl Malden’s Mitch is the beating heart and soul of the film and they have a lovely scene with lots of chaste flirtations by the Mississippi River. It’s interesting too how much this film says about the differences in time between now and its era in the 1950s. During their first encounter, Mitch states he is “6ft1 and 207lbs” before asking Blanche how much she weighs and how old she is. This was a common question and occurrence at the time, but asking a lady such questions would be highly socially unacceptable in 2020.

Ultimately, though, this movie belongs to Leigh and she gives a deservedly Oscar-winning performance. Proof of her talent as the greatest actress of her generation. It’s just so sad she died at 53...A modern Hollywood tragedy.
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