Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8123 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-05-08
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Formats: Black & White, PAL, Special Edition
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 119 minutes

Synopsis
Tennessee Williams based his screenplay on Oscar Saul's adaptation of Williams' Pulitzer Prize-winning play set in a grimy New Orleans project. The story of the fragile sentimentalism of a former prostitute who visits her sister only to be taunted mercilessly by her childish brother-in-law. Academy Award Nominations: 12, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Marlon Brando), and Best Screeplay. Academy Awards: 4, including Best Actress (Vivien Leigh), Best Supporting Actress (Kim Hunter), and Best Supporting Actor (Karl Malden).

Customer Reviews

Haunting
Previous reviewers have given excellent and thorough synopses of this movie and actors, so I will not add to them. All I need to say is that this is one of those films that you MUST see. All these years on and it still remains resonantly powerful, shocking and thought-provoking. You have to be in the mood to see this film as believe me, it will linger with you for days. I cannot think of a modern movie to match Streetcar in its bare eloquence.

In a word:Out-standing
Because of censorship problems, this became held up & "merely" Marlon Brando's 2nd movie.

However, the moment you hear him bellow "HEY-Stell-ah!",and the first time you see the 6 ft 13 stone Brando in a t-shirt, your world will change, just as certainly as cinema was never the same again, when movie-goers met these effects for the first time in 1951.

Credit to the others first. The under-rated Karl Malden plays Mr Ordinary with enough force to save being erased by the highly-charged dance of death between Brando & Vivienne Leigh.

Kim Hunter plays Stella, Brando's missus in this. She plays Stella as a sentient and sensitive human being(at least part of the time), so you feel sympathy for her at the end, and after the Brando/Leigh pas-de-deux reaches its inevitable climax, she deserves it.

Vivienne Leigh seems to be have been chosen because somebody remembered she played Southern belle Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With The Wind. Stupid idea;it shouldn't have worked. Of course, it does, as she proceeds to dance teasingly around Brando as Stanley Kowalski, thinking she will dispose of him like any spider with a fly in its' web.

Unfortunately for her, Tennessee Williams wrote this play, so you can guarantee the expected won't happen. Let's just say, she gets it, and you decide for yourself if it's what she asked for, deserved or wanted, or some Williamesque mixture of the three!

And that brings us to Brando. Somewhere in the dialogue Blanche(Vivienne Leigh)acidily remarks to Stella that Stanley is some sort of Neanderthal "Millions of years of evolution have just passed him by". In fact, Brando the person was millions of years removed from the animal in Stanley. Most of the time!!

So, to get under the skin of Stanley, and portray him as animal, caveman, normal person being stalked, happily-married man about to be pounced on, someone who could be out of his depth, but doesn't know it, someone about to find out there is a straw about to break the camel's back is no mean effort. Particularly as Brando's performance also colours in about 30 other shades of person between and beyond those mentioned.

You will be physically and emotionally hooked and engaged by Brando from his entrance throughout the remainder of this film. He repeated this effect in so many other films, you know what to say if anyone tries to tell you he wasn't the greatest screen actor ever. Politely tell them to watch a few good movies first, starting here, and then come back when they've grown up.

As the man says:-"We had this date from the beginning, baby", which is one final compelling reason to purchase, I feel.

the new age of acting
Brando in Streetcar portrayed a new kind of acting that had never been seen before. His intensity was real and believable and would come to be known as the "method". Not to be outdone Vivien Leigh more than held her own and he is on record as saying she acted better than him(not sure I agree with that)Karl Malden and Kim Hunter with Leigh won Oscars and deservedly so but Streetcar "is" Brando and if you havent seen it yet and want the feel of New Orleans in the fifties this film is a must.