When Marlon Brando died in 2004, many people thought of him as simply a walking punchline. A crazy fat guy. Those people failed to recognize just what a revolutionary figure he was, that he changed the craft acting forever with his performance in Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire and in the series of iconic performances that followed.
Director Martin Scorcese put it in perspective when he said, "He's the marker. There was Before Brando and After Brando."
Marlon Brando's performance as Stanley Kowalski in the Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway play, then in the 1951 film version, blazed a trail for his contemporaries Montgomery Clift and James Dean, and inspired several generations of actors, including Paul Newman, Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro, and Johnny Depp.
Streetcar tells the story of Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh), a fragile, forty-something neurotic forced to leave her school-teaching job in Mississippi after getting caught having sex with one of her students, who travels to the French Quarter of New Orleans to stay with her pregnant sister Stella (Kim Hunter). Blanche is horrified to discover that Stella is married to the brutish, animalistic Kowalski. Stanley is deeply suspicious of Blanche, and when his buddy Mitch (Karl Malden) falls for her, he makes sure to sabotage the relationship by telling his pal exactly what kind of woman his sister-in-law is. The drama and sexual violence escalate from there.
While the censorious Hollywood production code led to many changes in the script, and the Catholic League of Decency demanded even more cuts, Tennessee Williams himself loved the movie. Despite the watering down of the more sensational elements of the play, much of the power of the stage version remains, thanks to most of the original Broadway cast being retained for the film, as well as director Elia Kazan. Kim Hunter won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, Karl Malden won Best Supporting Actor, and Vivien Leigh (who replaced Jessica Tandy for the film, won for Best Actress. Despite his star-making performance, Brando lost out on the Best Actor Oscar to Humphrey Bogart, who won for The African Queen.
A Streetcar Named Desire is one of the great American films, while Marlon Brando gives one of the screen's greatest performances. If you have never seen it, you should. As Scorcese said, "I think it's time, especially for younger people, to go back and see the picture...mainly because I think that they're too hip to feel those emotions that were up there just exploding on the screen. It's about being human."
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Comments
great review of one of the greatest movies of all time.
Thank you, Barbara. Most of the films featured here in the column are tied in with a local screening, such as this one, which was part of a theme night at the Alamo. It's nice to see that people are reading them beyond the event.
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