A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

Time for another movie. For those paying attention, I'm going to watch The Godfather trilogy next week which includes an Oscar-winning performance by Marlon Brando in the first one. Tonight's movie has Marlon Brando in one of his better-known, early works. It also has 3 other actors who won the best actress, best supporting actress, and best supporting actor. Brando was nominated for best actor but did not win thus preventing the sweep.

Movie is just over 2 hours long so plan accordingly if you're waiting for the review.

And that takes care of that movie.

Let's get right to it.

Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh were both outstanding. The characters they played (Stanley and Blanche) are crazy. They both did an outstanding job at it. Kim Hunter (Stella) was also pretty good in the supporting role. Karl Malden (Mitch) wasn't bad but I don't see how he won an Oscar for that. I mean, he didn't do anything wrong but his part seemed pretty small. I thought Brando was the best out of all of them so I don't get why he didn't win. Someone must have done a pretty good job that year....

...in 1951 the Oscar goes to - Humphrey Bogart, The African Queen. He was pretty good, too so I guess that seems about right.

Back to this movie. The plot was nothing special, but it didn't seem to matter. Normally a mediocre at best plot would be very damaging to a movie but it doesn't seem to matter here. Whatever points this lost for an unspectacular plot are very minimal. This movie was all about the acting and it was great.

Also, this movie also benefits from being shot in black and white. Blanche is almost always shown in the dark to conceal who she is and those dark shots just wouldn't be the same in color. The version I watched had yellow subtitles (in English...for an English-speaking movie) which were mildly irritating, but that won't affect the film's score since on a non-downloaded copy that wouldn't be an issue.

As a final thought, Stanley is said to be Polish and he has a fairly heavy accent. He reveals later in the movie that he's born in the USA. The actor portraying him, Marlon Brando, is also born in the United States (Nebraska) so I don't know what that accent was. Maybe he always has it or maybe it's an Eastern European one. Either way it doesn't really matter. I thought this film was pretty good.

86.5
B

UP NEXT: The Birds as part of a Hitchcock marathon on Turner Classic Movies.

I just watched the episode of The Simpsons titled "A Streetcar Named Marge" and wow! That episode is so much funnier now. The episode turns the movie back into a play but makes it a musical with some pretty funny results. There's even a reference to The Birds and a cameo by Hitchcock. During the play there's an illusion to Citizen Kane as Homer fans himself with a torn up program just like Charlie Kane did during his wife's terrible opera.

Watching all these old movies really pays off when you rewatch The Simpsons.

You, too can see this episode here.

Speaking of The Simpsons, check out some morons review of A Streetcar Named Desire on Amazon.com:

a customer wrote:

Vivien Leigh is nothing compared to Marge Simpson, and Marolon Brando just couldn't pull off the same caliber of performance as Ned Flanders.

While the episode is great, come on!

It was actually a renaissance of sorts for Vivien Leigh. She once again proved extreme versatility, not unlike Helen Mirren today.