A Streetcar Named Desire (1951, Elia Kazan) (Patreon)

74/100

Second viewing, last seen 30 long years ago. (Unless I’ve blanked on a revisit ca. 1993-95, before I started logging repeat viewings. Don’t think so. Anyway, it’s been a while.) As sometimes happens with canonical heavyweights, the play had sort of calcified in memory as an itemized list of its most iconic moments—“kindness of strangers,” “STELLA!”, etc.—and it was genuinely exciting to be reminded that Streetcar entire constitutes a living, breathing organism, unencumbered by the imposing weight of posterity. Williams can admittedly get a bit precious and melodramatic, particularly when a Southern belle’s bemoaning her slow fade, but he also excels at caustic throwaway remarks (“What is this article? That’s a solid gold dress, I believe”) and at executing hairpin emotional turns that are nonetheless remarkably fluid. I’d also forgotten the extent to which act one hinges upon what’s essentially a petty financial dispute, with Stanley convinced that Blanche is withholding Stella’s share (and hence his share, per the oft-cited Napoleonic Code) of a small fortune obtained via the sale of their ancestral home*. While that tends to get overshadowed by very disturbing subsequent events, it serves to ground said developments in Stanley’s class-based resentment…which gets further complicated, in this miraculous approximation of the original Broadway production, by Brando’s offbeat embodiment of crude masculinity.

I say “miraculous” because it’s hard to believe that we were so fortunate as to actually get Brando’s legendary performance on celluloid—that he wasn’t replaced, à la Jessica Tandy, by an established movie star. (Retaining Hunter and Malden makes more sense, as those aren’t the marquee roles. Though I’m surprised that Warner allowed Hunter to be so boldly carnal, even as she eschews the slightest hint of Hollywood glamour.) Which is not to suggest that Leigh’s anything less than superb (the tempered mask drop after Mitch insists upon looking at Blanche in full light is incredible), nor to deny that some other actor could have made Stanley Kowalski indelible in his own unique way. By all accounts, though, Brando was truly electrifying onstage, and Kazan clearly managed to port at least some of that energy over, slightly recalibrated for cinema’s intimacy. Superlative framing and blocking ensure that this Streetcar looks like a movie, rather than just filmed theater (ironically, that’s arguably more true of scenes set in the apartment than of scenes that have been “opened out”); they also achieve startling effects that no actor, however great or transformative, can pull off without the camera’s assistance. I think I may have gasped aloud when the film positions Stanley in medium profile, cuts to Blanche looking out from I think she was in the bathroom, and then cuts to a head-on long shot of Stanley from her POV; this all happens in literally three seconds, and the shift in angle and proximity itself wields inexplicable force.

Granted, Brando has to look like that, plus already have established Stanley as a wheedling id monster. Point is, this is a rare instance of lightning being captured in a bottle that also houses a perfect ship constructed from toothpicks.

Well, nearly perfect. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the film is crippled by alterations made to appease the Hays office, but it’s certainly diminished by them—significantly so in the final seconds, which are barely forgivable bullshit (made worse by Hunter’s visible shame at taking part in this act of vandalism, though I guess one could charitably read that as Stella’s shame at having caved to Stanley so many times in the past). Kazan’s handling of the rape is a bit of a double-edged sword: faultless as visual metaphor, but also oblique enough to dilute the horror of Blanche’s self-protective delusion. Now, Williams never intended an Irreversible- or even an Accused-style extended onslaught (I believe most stage productions speedily fade to black), so maybe this particular “problem” is inherent; what’s more, it’s hard to argue that the smashed mirror, combined with Blanche’s supine and seemingly unconscious reflection within, doesn’t convey everything necessary. Wrestling with this makes me wonder whether perhaps I just think that the play gets weaker as it goes along; I’m most enthralled by the first half, throughout which Blanche and Stanley seem to be engaged in a pitched battle for Stella’s soul. (Not sure what to make of several vaguely incestuous shots—particularly one that keeps the sisters’ faces pressed together for a small eternity, looking for all the world as they’re on the verge of making out, while Stanley calls to Stella from the hallway. Nor do I know whether Mitch telling Blanche “I thought you were straight” had an obvious double meaning in the mid-‘40s. So I’m just gonna leave any possible queer subtext to more qualified critics.) That aspect recedes once Mitch comes a-courtin’, in part because Stella spends most of the late going offscreen, in the hospital; Streetcar explicitly becomes Blanche’s tragedy, the mid-20th century’s equivalent of some vengeful asshole digging up your cam work and texting it around. That’s pretty potent, too, and I can’t help but mourn the loss of Stanley starting to unbutton a maniacally weeping Stella’s blouse as one of his poker buddies speaks the ice-cold final line: “This game is seven-card stud.”

* To which Blanche referred as “Belle Reeve” half a dozen times before it dawned on me that it must be Belle Rêve (“Beautiful Dream”; in French the second word is pronounced “rev,” as in rev your motor).