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A Streetcar Named Desire: Blanche Dubois
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A Streetcar Named Desire was made at a time when the MPPDA still had some power in Hollywood... enabling them to influence and force director Elia Kazan to cut "unacceptable" scenes from the film. For instance, scenes about Blanche's late husband's homosexuality and her continual desire to have sex had to be eliminated. Likewise the end of the movie, which is more vague than it is explicit, originally showed the event that is, in the final version, only implied. Because of the struggle with the ratings board, even to just allow the implied rape, A Streetcar Named Desire is an important film because it diminished the iron grip the MPPDA's had on cinema and helped in destroying film censorship. So the film deserves plenty of credit for helping end Hollywood censorship, which prevented creative freedom and burdened the movie industry for decades.
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A Streetcar Named Desire depicts a culture clash between Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh), a pretentious, fading relic of the Old South, and Stanley Kowalski (Marlon Brando), a rising member of the industrial, inner-city immigrant class. Blanche is a Southern belle whose pretensions to virtue and culture only thinly mask her nymphomania and alcoholism. Arriving at the house of her sister Stella Kowalski (Kim Hunter), Stella fears Blanche’s arrival will upset the balance of her relationship with her husband Stanley, a primal, rough-hewn, brutish and sensual force of nature. He dominates Stella in every way, and she tolerates his offensive crudeness and lack of gentility largely because of her sexual need for him. Stanley’s friend and Blanche’s would-be suitor Mitch (Karl Malden) is similarly trampled along Blanche and Stanley’s collision course. Their final, inevitable confrontation results in Blanche’s mental annihilation.
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Introduction: A Streetcar Named Desire centers on a desolated woman named Blanche DuBois. Reared in Old South aristocratic traditions, she lived elegantly in the family homestead, married a man she adored, and pursued a career as an English teacher. But her life fell apart when she discovered that her husband, Allen Grey, was having a homosexual affair. Disgraced, he killed himself. Blanche sought comfort in the arms of other men, many men. After she had relations with one of her students, a 17-year-old, authorities learned of the encounter and fired her.
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![A Streetcar Named Desire [1951]](http://retrieverimages.lycos.com/images/a/-/s/a-streetcar-named-desire/i/021.jpg)
In "A Streetcar Named Desire" Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski gives what is clearly the best acting performance not to win an Academy Award (he lost to Humphrey Bogart in "The African Queen"). Vivien Leigh as Blanche DuBois, Kim Hunter as Stella Kowalski, and Karl Malden as Mitch all won in their respective acting categories. Years later, with "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" this same thing happened, with both of the ladies winning that time around.
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Blanche Dubois