Plot: 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: Elia Kazan
Writers: Tennessee Williams (original play "A Streetcar Named Desire"), Oscar Saul (adaptation)
Stars: Vivien Leigh, Marlon Brando and Kim Hunter
The breaking of Blanche
"Throughout her possession by that uncannily evil monster, manic depression, with its deadly ever-tightening spirals, she retained her own individual canniness – an ability to disguise her true mental condition from almost all except me, for whom she could hardly be expected to take the trouble."
- Laurence Olivier, talking about his marriage to Vivien Leigh, who suffered from bipolar disorder.
"A Streetcar Named Desire" is a dream material for any actress - the role of Blanche Dubois was played among others by Jessica Lange, Cate Blanchett and in the most famous rendition - Vivien Leigh. But the movie is known the most perhaps not because of the rain of awards it got and the fact that to this day along with "Network" remains the only movie to win three Academy Awards for its actors, but because of Marlon Brando's performance as Stanley Kowalski, brutal and simple man who collides with highly disturbed and fragile Blanche Dubois, his wife's sister.
The story is set in New Orleans and it begins as Blanche exits the streetcar with the name "desire". Blanche seems very off, detached from reality, speaking in beautiful words, talking almost as if she was reciting poems, opening her eyes wide and appearing very fragile from the first seconds of the film - she looks like a fairytale princess that was punished to descent into horrible and dirty reality. From the very first moments delicate and sophisticated Blanche and Stanley collide - upon meeting her he unceremoniously takes off his shirt and parades around apartment to Blanche's shock and amazement. When one of Stanley's friends, Mitch, starts falling for Blanche and her sister takes her side and begins to push Stanley away, the things between troubled Blanche and Stanley will take turn for the worse.