A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

A short post today, as I am tired and would like to go to bed. But I just watched Elia Kazan's 1951 classic "A Streetcar Named Desire," and I feel that it merits some journalistic attention before I retire.

Sometimes, it can be difficult to contextualize classic films, for the very reason that we have seen newer films that borrow, sometimes quite liberally, from the innovations of its predecessors. Consider, for instance, The Magnificent Seven; ignoring that it is a derivative of Kurosawa, the modern audience is tempted to think of the film as cliché from top to bottom, simply because we are familiar with the Western conventions. However, historically, I would perhaps group The Magnificent Seven in with High Noon, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and The Searchers as four films that ushered in the era of Westerns as "High Art" - films to be taken seriously. The film does not exist in a vacuum, in other words; and while we recognize some elements of Unforgiven in Steve McQueen's speech, it is important to remember which movie came first.

Unfortunately, neither can our analysis exist in a vacuum, and we are foolish to try to push our cinematic experiences out of mind when we experience a new (to us) movie. Often, when we are reminded of another film, it allows us to create comparisons for the sake of evaluation. With this in mind, I perceived three films to be particularly valuable in comparison to Streetcar: Gone With the Wind, The Shining, and The Grand Illusion. I will look at each of these comparisons briefly.

Gone With the Wind is perhaps the most obvious comparison. Both films star Vivien Leigh as an economically struggling Southern belle whose identity is defined by confines of property, propriety, and Southern aristocracy. In one, she is blonde; in the other, a redhead. Neither character is particularly likeable, to be frank. The primary distinction is that GWTW ends with Scarlett O'Hara returning to the hope that is embodied in Tara - her inherited, unearned property that, despite everything, assures her a sense of security and purpose in a world that is turned upside-down by the Civil War. This ending is, at best, rather entrenched in the Southern antebellum class system - hardly a victory for feminists everywhere (ironically, Rhett, although he's kind of a dick, seems more understanding of the world and how it is changing. Historically speaking, his actions are probably the more enlightened and progressive. There is a lot of criticism of Scarlett out there which you can read if you'd like; I won't go into it too much here). By contrast, Blanche DuBois has lost the family estate, and the loss of it has probably contributed to what we realize throughout Streetcar is her mental illness. She has delusions, anxiety, an inappropriate fixation on the past, distrust of men, etc. It is what it is, I suppose. However, before you castigate my analysis for being dismissive of Blanche's plight, and claim that it is the unfairness of the patriarchal system in which she lives that is to blame, consider that Blanche wants nothing more than to return to that very same system, and even as she is losing her mind, she creates delusions of absconding with a Houston millionaire. Yes, the system is unfair. I won't debate that. But Blanche's situation is compounded by her unwillingness to seek an alternative, as did her sister Stella. Of course, it's not that simple, but it can't be claimed that no options are given. GWTW and Streetcar make much the same philosophical point, and neither present much of a victory for opponents of the oppressive Southern aristocratic system.

The Shining may be a stretch, I concede, so I'll be brief here. But it struck me while watching Blanche slowly lose her grip that the director, Elia Kazan, was essentially blurring the film's diegesis for dramatic effect, and that Kubrick does much the same thing, also to depict mental illness. However, perhaps as a function of the advancements in filmmaking, The Shining certainly provides more bang for my metaphorical buck; Blanche DuBois makes us feel as though we are watching a crazy person, but Jack Torrence makes us feel like we are a crazy person. There's a difference. And the net effect for Streetcar is that our sympathies for Blanche are somewhat diminished, I think, and her character remains not quite "one-dimensional," yet not quite not, either. Perhaps that's neither here nor there, but that was my thought as I watched.

However, I was most struck by a comparison to another 1939 classic (the first being GWTW), Jean Renoir's The Grand Illusion. If you haven't seen this movie, you should. But essentially, both it and Streetcar deal in large part with the failing and entropic demise of the aristocracy, the latter in the American South and the former in Europe during World War One. This is a complicated comparison, since the films are so different, and certainly we could try to genderize some of the arguments about each, but the important point here is that the characters in Grand Illusion are self-aware about their situation, and honest enough to acknowledge it in discourse with one another. By contrast, only Marlon Brando, as Stanley Kowalski, opines with such awareness in Streetcar. Perhaps it's not comforting that the most truthful and insightful character in Streetcar is an alcoholic, abusive, chain-smoking mumbler with an anger management problem, but then Tennessee Williams is never really all that cheerful. My point is that if you would like a more intellectual approach to this complicated issue, then Renoir may provide a more subtle and nuanced avenue.

A final note on the acting: I mentioned that Blanche is rather one-dimensional, as is Stella, more or less. This may not be totally fair. In the early 1950s, Marlon Brando gave perhaps four of his greatest performances in Streetcar, Julius Caesar, The Wild One, and On The Waterfront. Probably not until Al Pacino in the 1970s would an actor put together four performances of that quality in that short a period of time. However, The Wild One is not a very good film overall, and On The Waterfront and Caesar both have terrific supporting casts. Looking solely at the quality of acting, Marlon Brando simply dominates Streetcar. No one else really comes that close.

It's a good film, but except for Brando's performance, it's not a great one. I would, however, like to see it on stage, where I think expressive acting (Brando's forte) would be less important than the delivery of dialogue.