A Streetcar Named Desire (Kazan, 1951)

Marlon Brando is sexy. He's sexy while strutting down the street in a grease-stained wifebeater. He's sexy in a suit. He's sexy in a sweat-soaked T-shirt. He's sexy in the silk pajamas. He's sexy. Period.

Lest you think I watched this movie to jerk off, A Streetcar Named Desire is actually a vital part of my history project. I would have certainly breezed right by its ratty DVD case in the library if it were not for this project. But to my great fortune, I picked up this film.

A Streetcar Named Desire is fraught with tension, explosion, and passion anchored by its magnetic performances. Understatement may be the newest vogue, but Streetcar rarely seems dated in its outbursts of raw, and honest, emotion.

I spent a paragraph drooling over Brando, but one should not forget that it is truly Vivien Leigh's film. As the disturbed and shunned Blanche Dubois, Leigh paints a portrait of a Southern belle vastly superior to any work she did in all 4 hours of Gone With the Wind. Although some may argue Blanche to be an intentionally outrageous character, I feel that she is very real indeed. Blanche's passive-aggressiveness and her eager facade gave me strong impressions of people I have met in real life.

I don't have much to say about Streetcar except that it is one of the few "classics" I do not feel disappointed in. On a slight tangent, it is interesting to return to A Streetcar Named Desire after watching Pedro Almodovar's All About My Mother, which references the former film heavily.