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.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.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.
- Director
- Writers
- Tennessee Williams(screen play)
- Oscar Saul(adaptation by)
- Stars
Top credits
- Director
- Writers
- Tennessee Williams(screen play)
- Oscar Saul(adaptation by)
- Stars
- Won 4 Oscars
- 17 wins & 15 nominations total
Videos3
Mel Archer
- Foremanas Foreman
- (uncredited)
Walter Bacon
- Club Patronas Club Patron
- (uncredited)
Dahn Ben Amotz
- Minor Roleas Minor Role
- (uncredited)
Joe Brooks
- Workeras Worker
- (uncredited)
John George
- Passerbyas Passerby
- (uncredited)
- Director
- Writers
- Tennessee Williams(screen play) (original play "A Streetcar Named Desire")
- Oscar Saul(adaptation by)
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
- All cast & crew
Storyline
Blanche DuBois, a high school English teacher with an aristocratic background from Auriol, Mississippi, decides to move to live with her sister and brother-in-law, Stella and Stanley Kowalski, in New Orleans after creditors take over the family property, Belle Reve. Blanche has also decided to take a break from teaching as she states the situation has frayed her nerves. Knowing nothing about Stanley or the Kowalskis' lives, Blanche is shocked to find that they live in a cramped and run down ground floor apartment - which she proceeds to beautify by putting shades over the open light bulbs to soften the lighting - and that Stanley is not the gentleman that she is used to in men. As such, Blanche and Stanley have an antagonistic relationship from the start. Blanche finds that Stanley's hyper-masculinity, which often displays itself in physical outbursts, is common, coarse and vulgar, being common which in turn is what attracted Stella to him. Beyond finding Blanche's delicate hoidy-toidy act as putting on airs, Stanley, a plant worker, believes she may really have sold Belle Reve and is withholding Stella's fair share of the proceeds from them. What further affects the relationship between the three is that Stella is in the early stage of pregnancy with her and Stanley's first child. Soon after her arrival at the Kowalskis, Blanche starts to date Mitch, one of Stanley's friends and coworkers who is a little softer around the edges than most of Stanley's friends. Mitch does not hide the fact that he is looking in general to get married because of a personal issue, he wanting Blanche ultimately to be his wife. Mitch is somewhat unaware that Blanche has somewhat controlled their courtship to put herself in the best possible light, both figuratively and literally. But in Stanley's quest to find out the truth about Belle Reve and Blanche's life in Auriol, the interrelationships between Stanley, Blanche, Stella and Mitch may be irrevocably affected, with any revelation about that life which may further destroy what's left of Blanche's already damaged mental state. —Huggo
- off screen rape
- mental illness
- sister sister relationship
- histrionic personality disorder
- brother in law sister in law relationship
- 111 more
- Taglines
- ...When she got there she met the brute Stan, and the side of New Orleans she hardly knew existed.
- Genre
- Certificate
- M/PG
- Parents guide
Did you know
- TriviaAs the film progresses, the set of the Kowalski apartment actually gets smaller to heighten the suggestion of Blanche's increasing claustrophobia.
- GoofsWhen Stanley comes back from taking Stella to the hospital, he is looking for a bottle opener. He finds it on the mantelpiece, shakes up a bottle of beer, and opens it. The beer foams up and spills on his trousers. But if you watch at the moment when he swings himself up to sit on the table - before he opens the bottle - you can see that the front of his trousers are already wet. Apparently they re-shot it without him changing into dry trousers.
- Alternate versionsThe scene in which Blanche and Stanley first meet was edited a bit to take out some of the sexual tension that both had towards each other when the film was first released in 1951. In 1993, this footage was restored in the "Original Director's Version" of the film. The three minutes of newly-added footage sticks out from the rest of the film because Warner Brothers did not bother to restore these extra film elements along with the rest of the movie, leaving them very scratchy due to deterioration.
- ConnectionsEdited into Un Américain nommé Kazan (2018)
- SoundtracksIt's Only a Paper Moon
(1933) (uncredited)
Music by Harold Arlen
Lyrics by E.Y. Harburg and Billy Rose
Sung by Vivien Leigh while doing her hair
Top review
Vivien Leigh Gives One of Cinema's Greatest Performances
Tennessee Williams himself wrote of Vivien Leigh"s performance in "Streetcar Named Desire": "She brought everything I intended to the role and even much more than I had dared dream of".
Brando is wonderful as Stanley Kowalski, but the new viewers to the film seem to come away with the haunting greatness of Vivien Leigh in what is one of the most harrowing and shattering pieces of acting ever committed to film.
Although some have expressed regret that Jessica Tandy did not repeat her stage performance, it is probably good to note that her husband Hume Cronyn and Elia Kazan (the director of the film and play) both never felt that Tandy quite got the character right. If you listen to the radio performance of extracted scenes that Tandy gave on the occasion of the Pulitzer Prize award, it will reenforce the perfection of Leigh's inflections and innate understanding of the role. This inner and complete understanding is what Brando praises Leigh for in his autobiography. He agrees that she plays this Hamlet of female roles better than anyone because he felt she was quite like the character...sadly.
If anyone is interested in great acting check out "Streetcar" for Vivien Leigh's Academy Award winning performance. The supporting cast is outstanding from Kim Hunter and Karl Malden (both Oscar winners for the film)to, of course, the iconographic T-shirt-torn Brando.
Brando is wonderful as Stanley Kowalski, but the new viewers to the film seem to come away with the haunting greatness of Vivien Leigh in what is one of the most harrowing and shattering pieces of acting ever committed to film.
Although some have expressed regret that Jessica Tandy did not repeat her stage performance, it is probably good to note that her husband Hume Cronyn and Elia Kazan (the director of the film and play) both never felt that Tandy quite got the character right. If you listen to the radio performance of extracted scenes that Tandy gave on the occasion of the Pulitzer Prize award, it will reenforce the perfection of Leigh's inflections and innate understanding of the role. This inner and complete understanding is what Brando praises Leigh for in his autobiography. He agrees that she plays this Hamlet of female roles better than anyone because he felt she was quite like the character...sadly.
If anyone is interested in great acting check out "Streetcar" for Vivien Leigh's Academy Award winning performance. The supporting cast is outstanding from Kim Hunter and Karl Malden (both Oscar winners for the film)to, of course, the iconographic T-shirt-torn Brando.
helpful•12034
- Mayesgwtw39
- May 21, 2003
Details
Box office
- Budget
- $1,800,000 (estimated)
- Gross worldwide
- $49,523
- Runtime2 hours 2 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.37 : 1
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