Tonight is the 96th Annual Academy Awards
Today's Cinema Sunday post looks back at a film that was nominated for a bunch of awards at the 1951 Oscars and won a lot of them too.
Or inside one of those tenements, a shaken, fragile woman tremulously says, "I have always relied on the kindness of strangers."
Even if you've never seen A Streetcar Named Desire, chances are you're familiar with these two scenes.
Frequently a subject of homage or parody, these scenes may suggest a familiarity with the subject matter even without seeing the story itself.
A few weeks ago, I watch the 1951 film version of A Streetcar Named Desire and I will say, whatever I thought I knew about this story did not prepare for the emotional apocalypse on display in this film.
Today's Cinema Sunday takes a look at the multiple Oscar nominated motion picture version of Tennessee William's iconic play.
I must caution you: in the grand tradition of n the spirit of Wuthering Heights and From Here to Eternity and The Hustler: "NOBODY in this DAMN MOVIE is HAPPY!! At all!"
Welcome to New Orleans, Blanche DeBois. A middle aged high school teacher, she has come to New Orleans to visit her sister Stella and Stella's husband, Stanley Kowalski. She takes a streetcar named "Desire" (not one for subtlety is our Tennessee Williams) to the French Quarter where Stella and Stanley live in a tenement apartment.
Evincing a self image of intellectual sophistication and a prim beauty of polite society, Blanche is horrified by the conditions she finds her sister living in.
Stella seems to think she's doing OK. Her relationship with her husband can be volatile but the make up sex is great and she's having a baby.
Besides it's not like Blanche has it all going on. Allegedly on leave from her teaching position due to her "nerves". Blanche has lost the family home in Belle Reve to creditors and she's not broker with nowhere to go.
That doesn't stop Blanche from acting like she's all that, fishing for compliments on how pretty she is and bragging about all the sophisticated things she's done with all the sophisticated people in sophisticated society.
Not sophisticated is Stella's husband Stanley who talks tough and has a hair trigger temper. And he ain't got time for whatever bullshit Blanche is shoveling and frequently criticizes her and mocks her.
Stanley Kowalski ain't going to let Blanche DeBois pull nothing over on him.
Stanley Kowalski is too bullish, brutal and thickheaded to realize Blanche isn't pulling anything over on anybody. It's clear to Stella and everyone else that Blanche is not well, caught up in a cycle of delusion and deception, trying to cope in her own messed up way with whatever trauma her psyche has experienced. Blanche prefers dim lighting or even darkness. When she isn't taking another bath, she's flits about the Kowalski apartment, anticipating gentlemen callers who never show.
"NOBODY in this DAMN MOVIE is HAPPY!! At all!"
Stanley's friend Mitch gets caught up in Blanche's orbit. Courteous and compassionate, Mitch becomes enamored with Blanche. Mitch has dedicated so much of his life to caring for this mother, love has passed him by. He sees Blanche as fragile and broken but sees her as someone he can care for.
Then Stanley Kowalski finds out the truth about prim and proper Blanche DeBois. She's not on leave from her school, she was fired for having sex with a 17 year old student. And she was a regular at a local hotel near Belle Reve if you needed a whore for the evening.
Stanley tells Mitch who is utterly gob smacked and heartbroken to find out the truth. In an angry confrontation with Blanche, Mitch demands to know why she never went out with him in the day time, always at night and in dimly lit places. Mitch rips a lampshade off a light and thrusts Blanche's face in the harsh unforgiving light and sees she is older than she led him to believe. Another lie in her delusion that she is still young and beautiful woman of polite society.
"NOBODY in this DAMN MOVIE is HAPPY!! At all!"
After a fight with Stanley send her into labor, Stella goes to the hospital to await the birth of her child. Stanley goes back to the apartment where he taunts Blanche, insults her, assaults her and rapes her.
After Stella comes home with her baby, she finds Blanche in an even more fragile, broken state, nervous and skittish and unable to focus or stay coherent, virtually catatonic.
A doctor and a nurse arrive to take Blanche to a mental hospital. Blanche refuses to go and the nurse attempts to physically force her to come with them. The doctor takes a more compassionate approach which Blanche responds to quietly, taking his arm as they exit the Kowalski apartment. Blanche tells the doctor, "I have always relied on the kindness of strangers."
Stella realizes the truth of what Stanley did to Blanche, takes her baby and vows never to return.
Stanley calls out,"STELLA! Hey, STELLA!"
But his pleas go unanswered.
Say it with me one more time:
"NOBODY in this DAMN MOVIE is HAPPY!! At all!"
Whoa! This movie is some really rough stuff.
Director Elian Kazan (who also directed the equally visceral and intense A Face In the Crowd) presents a story that is not pretty but if you're going for dark and gritty, well, the movie looks good. Darkness battles with light in the hot humid environment of New Orleans. Kazan gives us a setting that is not an easy place to live. Life in the French Quarter is desperate and hard.
And the arrival of Blanche DeBois doesn't make things better. Flighty, talkative, prone to self adulation and hyperbole, Blanche is not an easy person to put up with, let alone love. But it's to Vivien Leigh's credit that she still makes Blanche a sympathetic person.
Vivien Leigh's time as Blanche was not easy for the actress who struggled with her own issues with her mental health. Leigh had what would likely be diagnosed today as bipolar disorder and she had to recover from her time in the dark abyss of Blanche DeBois.
It's clear that for all her bragging about her high society roots, Blanche is not well, shattered by the trauma of an existence that runs counter to her elevated ideas of what she thought her life should be. Blanche is a damaged soul who needs care and compassion.
But all she gets from Stanley Kowalski is ridicule and scorn that escalates to physical and sexual assault to go with the emotional damage. I suppose it's true that Marlon Brando perfectly embodies Stanley's brutal loutish persona, who is not as smart as he would like you to think he is and all he can do is explode in violent, volcanic eruptions of temper.
But I've never b been a big fan of Marlon Brando's style of acting. It doesn't help that everything I've seen him in before (Guys & Dolls, Mutiny on the Bounty, Superman) are films where he was not particularly well suited or comfortable with his part.
A Streetcar Named Desire is objectively a powerful movie, a story well told that affected me profoundly as I watched it. And it truly deserves all the nominations and win the film received at the Academy Awards in 1951.
Just remember this important warning:
"NOBODY in this DAMN MOVIE is HAPPY!! At all!"
No comments:
Post a Comment