The play A Streetcar Named Desire explores brutality vs. tenderness displayed through the personalities of Stanley Kowalski and Blanche DuBois. Marlon Brando's charismatic portrayal of Stanley Kowalski in Elia Kazan's film version of A Streetcar Named Desire undermines the validity of Blanche's struggle. The contrast between Vivien Leigh's Blanche and Brando's Stanley emphasizes the most negative aspects of Blanche's character while supporting and validating the most positive of Stanley's, unbalancing the original intentions of Tennessee Williams in depicting the struggle between the Old World and the New. This contrast affirms the importance of the consideration of Williams’s stage directions included in the original version; it demonstrates how the ways in which the characters are interpreted for film production modifies the audience’s understanding of the play. Marlon Brando’s portrayal of Stanley Kowalski in the film adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire, through the use of method acting, modifies the audience’s understanding of the play. As a representation of the savage and brutal forces of modern society, Stanley’s character pursues and is driven by desire: “Animal joy in his being is implicit in all his movements and attitude. Since earliest manhood the center of his life has been pleasure with women, the giving and taking of it, he sizes women up at a glance,…
The 1950s was a frantic decade during American history, WW2 just finished, the baby boomer generation just commenced, paranoia of the Communist conquer was rampant and racism was at its high especially in the southern parts of the US. Popular Culture or otherwise known as Pop Culture started during the 1950s in America. It brought to light other perspective and views of society that were considered radical and degenerate. Popular Culture had many branches such as fashion, music and film where…
Tennessee Williams in his play A Streetcar Named Desire explores the natural state of man and his primitive desires and actions. Through his characters, Stanley and Blanche, he shows how the two sides of man’s natural state. William’s goal is shown in the 1951 production of the play starring Marlon Brando and Vivian Leigh. In this production the play is acted out in a way that allows all audiences to grasp the underlying theme while remaining entertaining and engaging to the audience. The…
level of neglect is expected and humoured for Asians, Latin americans and Native americans. Furthermore, due to much of the diversity controversy concentrating heavily on black actors, other minorities can often be forgotten. In addition to this, Chris Rock made reference throughout the ceremony referring to ‘black actors’ getting the same opportunities as white people, as opposed to talking about all minorities in general. In 1973 during the 45th anniversary of the Academy awards, actor…
Elia Kazan and quickly signed on to become the director of the play and the film adaptation hiring an almost unknown actor Marlon Brando in the role of Stanley Kowalski. The play became a smash hit, and even a Pulitzer prize-winner. This caused the critics and audience to demand more greatness from Williams just under 40 he was America 's most famous playwright he started to feel the weight of it all and started hitting the bottle. He dealt with alcoholism in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, a play about…
Dr. Colapierto Civil Rights Roundtable 1963 The round table discussion consisted of James Baldwin, Harry Belafonte, Marlon Brando, Charlton Heston, Joseph Minklelwitz, and Sidney Portier. The topics of discussion were civil rights and the March on Washington. All the men had something in common; all were entertainers in some kind of aspect, and all came to Washington for the March on Washington. As stated in the video, some of these men were long term fights, and others joined very recently.…
Stanley Kowalski was played by Marlon Brando. Brando had begun implementing the Method acting technique which caused obstacles between Leigh’s classical training, however it caused their chemistry to be more unpredictable on set. Stella played by Kim Hunter and also Mitch who was portrayed by Karl Malden. Blanche DuBois was played by Vivian Leigh, she too had played the role of Blanche before on the London stage. Leigh also had played the Southern belle of Scarlett O’Hara in “Gone With the…
rationalizes that being exiled to the island and taking care of Pres will suffice as her punishment. With Julie’s history of being in love with Pres and going to extremes, it can easily be argued that being exiled to Lazarette Island is what she genuinely wanted because she would be the one with Pres, not Amy. In A Streetcar Named Desire, also set in New Orleans, but in the 1940s and focusing more on the middle to lower class citizens, manipulation is also present. The premise of the story is…
After the death of Vito Corleone (played by Marlon Brando), his youngest son Michael (played by Al Pacino) is now the head of the Corleone crime family. With new responsibilities placed on his shoulders, Michael now orchestrates the murders of his rivals, the other head families, in order to take control as the dominant family. Through a five minute scene, the murders and the baptism of his nephew manage to intertwine a lot of prevalent themes in the Godfather (by Francis Ford Coppola), into a…
script for the most part because Tennessee Williams was also the screenwriter for the movie. The movie starts off with music (directed by Alex North) that gets the audience into the feel of New Orleans in the 1940’s. Then we go on to follow Blanche (Vivien Leigh) discover the world her sister, Stella (Kim Hunter), now lives in. Blanche seems very paranoid from the very beginning. While reading the play I never picked up any hints to Blanche’s mental stability and I was very confused why her…