A Streetcar Named Desire

In the classic play by Tennessee Williams, brought to the screen by Elia Kazan, faded Southern belle Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh) comes to visit her pregnant sister, Stella (Kim Hunter), in a seedy section of New Orleans. Stella's boorish husband, Stanley Kowalski (Marlon Brando), not only regards ...more

With the same director (Elia Kazan), a screenplay co-adapted by the playwright (Tennessee Williams), and three-quarters of the Broadway production's stars, A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) transcended "filmed theater" to become a groundbreaking Hollywood work. Battling the stringent Production Code, Kazan and Williams made concessions concerning the "perverse" sexual elements of Blanche DuBois' past, but they retained the crucial rape of "delicate," old-fashioned Blanche by brutal, "modern" ...more