Posted 9:11 am Wednesday, November 28, 2012
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'A Streetcar Named Desire' brings love, lust, French Quarter to life on screen
Welcome back, folks. I'd been looking for the right way to reintroduce my “Catching Up On…” column for a while now and Page Two seemed like the perfect spot to do so.
For those of you just joining me in this endeavor, these columns are essentially a chance for me to explore and examine the works of notable movie directors. Every movie I write about in this column will be one I've never seen before and I hope that you'll be as engaged as I am as I continue my cinematic education. As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts on my musings as well as the films I write about.
Getting down to business, I figured there would be no better director to properly reignite “Catching Up On…” with than Elia Kazan. Some of Kazan's films are among the most highly regarded in film history and I've never seen a single one of them. I'm honestly a little ashamed to admit that.
Nevertheless, I'm excited to dig into films like “East of Eden” and “On the Waterfront.” We begin, though, with a look at “A Streetcar Named Desire.”
This is one of those movies whose reputation has preceded it, thanks in large part to it being based on a Tennessee Williams play as well as a purveyor of Marlon Brando in tight shirts, but all I really knew was that this was the film that both ignited Brando's screen career and gave us countless imitators of the immortal line, “HEYY STELLAAAAA!”
Getting down to business, I figured there would be no better director to properly reignite “Catching Up On…” with than Elia Kazan. Some of Kazan's films are among the most highly regarded in film history and I've never seen a single one of them. I'm honestly a little ashamed to admit that.
Nevertheless, I'm excited to dig into films like “East of Eden” and “On the Waterfront.” We begin, though, with a look at “A Streetcar Named Desire.”
This is one of those movies whose reputation has preceded it, thanks in large part to it being based on a Tennessee Williams play as well as a purveyor of Marlon Brando in tight shirts, but all I really knew was that this was the film that both ignited Brando's screen career and gave us countless imitators of the immortal line, “HEYY STELLAAAAA!”
For the uninitiated, “Streetcar” thrusts Blanche (Vivien Leigh) a fading Southern belle, into the lives of her sister, Stella (Kim Hunter), and her Polish brother-in-law, Stanley (Brando). Lonely and destitute after the dissolution of her family's plantation home in Mississippi, Blanche comes knocking on her sister's door hoping to find some solace (and more than a little sympathy), but instead finds that her troubles have only begun.
What's immediately striking is how quickly Kazan establishes a sense of place. There's still no location in the world that feels like New Orleans' French Quarter and Kazan perfectly distills the essence of that place in an astonishingly short amount of time. It helps that the production design on the apartment in which most of the action takes place is phenomenal. You can practically feel the sticky, suffocating humidity of Southeastern Louisiana in every shot.
It's no wonder why everyone goes nuts for the performances here. Leigh is engrossing and tragic while Brando is a force of nature.
Stanley is a smoldering, arrogant, volatile mass of a man who has tenderness inside him though most of it is buried under a pile of rage that bursts forth with little to no warning.
And Kazan's direction, of course, is superb. It's more or less the blueprint for how you retain the essence of a story written for the stage and translate it to the screen. It maintains the necessary sense of creeping claustrophobia while also never feeling like we're simply watching a filmed play.
“Streetcar” is very much deserving of the hype and praise heaped upon it for so long, so it is with great anticipation as I watch the second pairing of Kazan and Brando, “On the Waterfront” for my next entry.
What's immediately striking is how quickly Kazan establishes a sense of place. There's still no location in the world that feels like New Orleans' French Quarter and Kazan perfectly distills the essence of that place in an astonishingly short amount of time. It helps that the production design on the apartment in which most of the action takes place is phenomenal. You can practically feel the sticky, suffocating humidity of Southeastern Louisiana in every shot.
It's no wonder why everyone goes nuts for the performances here. Leigh is engrossing and tragic while Brando is a force of nature.
Stanley is a smoldering, arrogant, volatile mass of a man who has tenderness inside him though most of it is buried under a pile of rage that bursts forth with little to no warning.
And Kazan's direction, of course, is superb. It's more or less the blueprint for how you retain the essence of a story written for the stage and translate it to the screen. It maintains the necessary sense of creeping claustrophobia while also never feeling like we're simply watching a filmed play.
“Streetcar” is very much deserving of the hype and praise heaped upon it for so long, so it is with great anticipation as I watch the second pairing of Kazan and Brando, “On the Waterfront” for my next entry.
