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A Streetcar Named Desire is a play written by Tennessee Williams and first performed on Broadway on December 3, 1947. [1] The play dramatizes the experiences of Blanche DuBois, a former Southern belle who, after encountering a series of personal losses, leaves her once-prosperous situation to move into a shabby apartment in New Orleans rented ...
- Tennessee Williams
- 1947
A Streetcar Named Desire: Directed by Elia Kazan. With Vivien Leigh, Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter, Karl Malden. Disturbed Blanche DuBois moves in with her sister in New Orleans and is tormented by her brutish brother-in-law while her reality crumbles around her.
- (115K)
- Drama
- Elia Kazan
- 1951-09-19
- Overview
- Production notes and credits
- Cast
- Academy Award nominations (* denotes win)
A Streetcar Named Desire, American film drama, released in 1951, that made Marlon Brando a movie star and helped revolutionize acting in the mid-20th century.
Adapted by Tennessee Williams from his Broadway play, the sexually charged saga centres on the marriage of Stella Kowalski (played by Kim Hunter) and Stanley (played by Brando), her brutish husband. The plot thickens with the arrival of Stella’s sister, Blanche DuBois (played by Vivien Leigh)—an aging, alcoholic, but still alluring Southern belle who scandalously lost her teaching post because of her affair with a student and whose pretensions of virtue and delusions of grandeur lead to dramatic consequences.
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A Streetcar Named Desire dramatically conveys the sweltering heat of New Orleans and the steamy, claustrophobic atmosphere in the apartment where the action takes place, and the film’s set design and movie score were highly praised. Karl Malden received accolades for his supporting role as Stanley’s friend Mitch, who begins dating Blanche. It was Brando’s performance, however, that continues to be cited above all others, and it is widely regarded as one of the most influential in screen history. It highlighted method acting (the Stanislavsky method) and helped usher in the era of the antihero, a character type solidified by Brando two years later in his role as the brooding biker in The Wild One.
The film features a number of iconic scenes and lines, including Blanche’s admission, when she is taken away and institutionalized, “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers,” and when Brando, in his torn T-shirt, cries out, “Stella! Hey, Stella!,” after his wife takes refuge in a neighbour’s apartment. The streetcar named “Desire” is both the name of one of the streetcars Blanche rides to her sister’s home on Elysian Fields, a street in the French Quarter, and the symbolic vehicle used all too often by Blanche in her never-ending attempt to win the affection of men. Leigh was given the role of Blanche over Jessica Tandy, who played the character on Broadway, because she was deemed a bigger box-office draw.
•Studio: Warner Brothers
•Director: Elia Kazan
•Producer: Charles K. Feldman
•Writer: Tennessee Williams
•Music: Alex North
•Running time: 122 minutes
•Vivien Leigh (Blanche DuBois)
•Marlon Brando (Stanley Kowalski)
•Kim Hunter (Stella Kowalski)
•Karl Malden (Mitch)
•Picture
•Director
•Art direction–set decoration (black and white)*
•Costume
•Sound
•Score
- Lee Pfeiffer
Sep 26, 2024 · A Streetcar Named Desire, play in three acts by Tennessee Williams, first produced and published in 1947 and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for drama for that year. One of the most admired plays of its time, it concerns the mental and moral disintegration and ultimate ruin of Blanche DuBois, a former.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Literature Notes. A Streetcar Named Desire. Play Summary. Blanche DuBois arrives to visit her sister, Mrs. Stella Kowalski, who lives in the French Quarter of New Orleans. She is shocked by the disreputable looks of the place. While a neighbor goes to find Stella, Blanche looks around the apartment for a drink.
A Streetcar Named Desire is a 1951 American Southern Gothic drama film adapted from Tennessee Williams 's Pulitzer Prize -winning play of the same name. It is directed by Elia Kazan, and stars Vivien Leigh, Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter, and Karl Malden.
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A short summary of Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire. This free synopsis covers all the crucial plot points of A Streetcar Named Desire.