A Streetcar Named Desire

[flipp525]

Just to echo Sonic’s sentiments, the language of the play is consciously exaggerated for the purpose of boiling the characters down to archetypes, yet archetypes with layers (bullying Stanley has an affinity for ten cent words; diaphonous and “gentle” Blanche is described as a spider -- “tarantula”, trapping men in her web). The brutish, working class foreign element represented by Stanley crushes the seemingly delicate and genteel Southern flower found in Blanche. It’s when these two worlds collide, that the decaying South is finally squashed.

I once read somewhere Blanche DuBois being compared to a “dusty moth continuously bouncing off a light bulb it knows it’ll get burned by” -- a description I’ve always find quite fitting.

They did a production of this play during my senior year of college in the spring of 2000. The director filled the entire stage with bare light bulbs (of course) and opened the show with people in Mardi Gras-esque skeleton costumes doing a choreographed dance with a coffin to the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter”. It was awesome.



Edited By flipp525 on 1186773817

[Sonic Youth]

Not sure how I liked the film. I'm not terribly familiar with the play, but the dialogue was a bit too high-minded for the characters in the film.

Streetcar isn't meant to come across as natural or realistic. It's theatrical, overheated, gothic, like much literature from the South. The direction equally stylized, all the better to accompany the source material.

Note to Jonathan Rosenbaum: THIS is what a filmed play looks like.

[OscarGuy]

Vivien Leigh gave an amazing performance.

Marlon Brando was almost her equal.

I liked Kim Hunter, but Karl Malden wasn't good at all.

Not sure how I liked the film. I'm not terribly familiar with the play, but the dialogue was a bit too high-minded for the characters in the film.

B was delish.