"A streetcar named desire" by Tenesse Williams.

Essay by Malpell5 September 2003

download word file, 2 pages 3.5 3 reviews

One can only agree that, "A movie based on a Tennessee Williams play is a Tennessee Williams film." (Forster Hirsch.) If the words in the play and in the movie of A Streetcar Named Desire are compared, anyone can realize that they are almost one and the same. The plot of the movie almost directly follows the structure of the play.

While reading the play, readers may have there own image of the main characters but because of the brilliance of Elia Kazan, the director of the movie A Streetcar Named Desire, in the choosing of the cast of the two most important parts, readers are now able to see the perfect group of actors and actresses representing these characters.

Marlon Brando gives an amazing rendition of Stanley Kowalski. Stanley is the epitome of an essential force. He is loyal to his friends, passionate to his wife, and heartlessly cruel to Blanche.

With his Polish ancestry, he represents the new, diverse America. Brando represents this character flawlessly. The way he reveals and acts as Stanley Kowalski furthers the reader's thoughts of his roughness, rudeness and vulgar ness that described Stanley in the play. The drama he brings to the screen while beating his wife and raping his sister-in-law, furthering the reader's ideas of Stanley as a disturbing and perverted man. Not many people could have carried these traits out as well as him, for this was not right or appropriate behavior of his time. That did not stop him in the least bit and it is because of the way that he was able to get over that fact and act the way that he felt Stanley truly was that gave the movie such popularity.

Vivian Leigh plays the role of Blanche DuBois, a high school English teacher...