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Movie Review: A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) July 1, 2009
Note: This is #26 in my 52 Classic Movies in 52 Weeks challenge for 2009.
Here, wait. I need to get this out of the way first:
Everybody take a deep breath and shout "STELA! HEEEY! STEEEEELLAAAAAAA!" Okay, good. Glad that's done. Let's move on.
For about the first half of this movie adaptation of Tennessee Williams's stage play I was thinking that my review was basically going to amount to "Blah, blah, blah. Talking heads. Boring!" And indeed that's a pretty accurate reflection of how I felt until about the second half when things picked up.
The movie follows the story of Blanche DuBois (Vivian Leigh), a self-styled Southern belle with a quickly tarnishing old family name. She's kind of messed up in the head, as becomes apparent to her more level headed sister Stella Kowalski (Kim Hunter) and Stella's brutish husband Stanley (Marlon Brando). Blanche moves herself in to Stella and Stanley's ramshackle New Orleans apartment and starts to interfere with their lives, though whether out of malice or her inherent ditziness the audience isn't quite sure which. Tensions grow and stuff.
Like a lot of stage plays, Streetcar's real luster comes from its presentation of characters and how we as viewers get to gradually learn and infer things about the characters and their relationships. For example, Blanche's back story and the reality of her current predicament are slowly peeled away, and we get as much entertainment out of that as we do empathizing with other characters as they learn the same things.
And this is a movie full of great performances. Leigh does a great job as a kooky and eventually unhinged Blanche, but it's really Marlin Brando that steals the show. The movie is worth watching for his performance alone as the animalistic and cruel Stanley Kowalski. Brando just slops pure brutish masculinity all over every scene he's in, and though he talks like a Murloc half the time, he's fascinating to watch and I was eventually drawn in by both his relationship with Stella and his developing attitudes towards Blanche.
Eventually. This whole thing took a long time to set up and get going, but while that part was pretty numbing, the payoff was worth it and it's the kind of story that sticks with you and keeps you thinking back on it for a while afterwords.
Trailer below.
Also this week, Jeremy reveiwed The Philadelphia Story.
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Posted by Sean Flinn on July 1, 2009 10:53 AM:
Yeah ... I haven't seen this movie in over a decade, but the review seems to gel with my experience, somewhat (I think I was hooked by the performances a bit earlier). Williams is borderline obsessed with those sort of Southern Gothic storylines -- people being driven insane by the grind of everyday life colliding with their own human frailties. Heat always seems to have something to do with as well (like, if he'd just set his stories someplace temperate, everything would be OK).
Posted by shawn on July 1, 2009 1:38 PM:
Oh man, I just saw where Karl Malden died. He won an oscar for his role in this movie.
Glad I am not famous these days, they are dropping like flies.
Posted by Paul Santa Cruz on July 1, 2009 2:08 PM:
Fair, informed review. I'm glad I don't have to call you an unwashed Philistine or anything like that.