Anniversary of A Streetcar Named Desire
On September 9, 1951, Elia Kazan's "A Streetcar Named Desire" premiered at the Venice International Film Festival.
The movie is actually a performance based on the play of the same name by Tennessee Williams transferred to film. The play was written in 1944-1947. "A Streetcar Named Desire" premiered at the Schubert Theater in New Haven in early November 1947, followed by performances at the Walnut Street Theater in Philadelphia, before moving to the Ethel Barrymore Theater on Broadway on December 3, 1947, where it held 855 performances. In 1948, Williams was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for this play. The play was directed by Elia Kazan.
The success of the Tennessee Williams play prompted independent producer Charles Feldman to buy the film rights to the play, after which he offered to make the film adaptation to Darryl F. Zanuck, head of 20th Century Fox, but Zanuck flatly refused, knowing that the censors would cut the whole point from the play. Then, with a similar proposal, Feldman turned to Jack L. Warner, head of Warner Bros. Warner accepted the offer.
The offer to make a film based on the play by Tennessee Williams was made to Elia Kazan, but he initially refused, citing the fact that he realized everything he wanted to achieve in the stage version. However, Tennessee Williams literally begged Kazan to accept the offer, and he agreed.
Elia Kazan set the condition that the same actors who played in his performance would play in the film. The studio agreed, with one exception: Olivia de Haviland, who was very popular at the time, especially after her role in the movie "The Heiress", was offered the role of Blanche Dubois. It's hard to say why de Haviland didn't play the part. According to some sources, she was not satisfied with the size of the proposed contract, according to others, she was forbidden to play this role by her husband, who feared that her reputation would be damaged. And then the producers came up with the idea to offer this role to an even more popular, but British actress, Vivien Leigh. Which also played this role in a play staged by Laurence Olivier in one of the London theaters.
On a box office basis, the producers' decision proved extremely fruitful: on a budget of $1.8 million, the film's box office in North America alone exceeded $8 million in its first year of release. However, for the Actress herself, an extremely deep immersion in the image of her heroine had negative consequences: suffering from bipolar disorder, Vivien Leigh later could hardly distinguish her real life from the life of Blanche Dubois.
As for the performer of the second main role - Stanley Kowalski - the approval of Marlon Brando for this role was also not without difficulty. It should be noted that even at the stage of selecting actors for the theatrical performance, Kazan had doubts about Brando, whom he considered too young and too handsome for this role. And only the actual ultimatum from Tennessee Williams that he sees no one else in this role convinced Kazan to agree with Brando's candidacy. And at the casting stage for the film, the producers already had doubts about Brando, since by that time he had only one film on his filmography - Fred Zinnemann's "The Men". And here already Kazan put forward something like an ultimatum and convinced the producers.
At the beginning of filming between Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando there were constant skirmishes, but these conflicts had nothing to do with their mutual attitude to each other's professionalism. Brando was simply annoyed by Lee's refined, typically British manner and stiffness. And Vivien Leigh was annoyed by the shamelessness, bordering on rudeness, Marlon Brando. It so happened that at the same time that the film "A Streetcar Named Desire" was filmed, Vivien Leigh's husband - Laurence Olivier - was also in Hollywood, filming William Wyler's film "Carrie". One day, the famous couple had dinner in a restaurant, and there Marlon Brando turned out to be. And the two men became friends. According to the official version, Marlon Brando was literally in awe of Olivier after his acting and directing work in the film "The Chronicle History of King Henry the Fifth with His Battell Fought at Agincourt in France". According to the unofficial version, or, more precisely, according to rumors or gossip in the acting environment, between Brando and Olivier began an affair. Be that as it may, after that Brando's attitude towards Vivien Leigh changed dramatically. He stopped bullying her. Although later, in his memoirs, Brando noted: "She was memorably beautiful, one of the great beauties of the screen, but she was also vulnerable, and her own life had been very much like that of Tennessee's wounded butterfly...Like Blanche, she slept with almost everybody and was beginning to dissolve mentally and to fray at the ends physically. I might have given her a tumble if it hadn't been for Larry Olivier."
Be that as it may, the film was shot, and quite quickly: in 36 shooting days. And then the problems that Darryl F. Zanuck predicted began: the censors demanded 68 amendments. When the requirements of state censorship were satisfied, the film came under fierce attack from the side of the so-called "Catholic Legion of Decency". Zealous Catholics demanded that the slightest hint of homosexuality and rape be removed from the film. The Legionnaires of Decency threatened to disrupt the display of the picture wherever it took place. Kazan even offered to make two versions: one complete, the other castrated in accordance with the requirements of "legionnaires from Catholicism." And let, they say, the viewer himself chooses which version to watch. But Warner Bros. got scared and released only the castrated version agreed with the "legionnaires".
It was this cropped version that was shown on September 9, 1951 at the Venice Film Festival. At this festival, Elia Kazan's film "A Streetcar Named Desire" was nominated for the main award - the Golden Lion. The jury of the film festival, chaired by the Italian writer and film critic Mario Gromo, awarded the main prize to Akira Kurosawa's masterpiece "Rashomon". The company of "relative losers" in Kazan's picture was, in particular, Billy Wilder's film "Ace in the Hole", Robert Bresson's film "The Diary of a Country Priest" and others. But the film "A Streetcar Named Desire" did not remain without an award. Elia Kazan was awarded the Special Jury Prize "For delivering a performance on screen, poetically interpreting the humanity of the characters through masterful directing."
In early 1952, Elia Kazan's "A Streetcar Named Desire" was nominated for an American Golden Globe Award. But the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) considered George Stevens's "A Place in the Sun", starring Elizabeth Taylor, to be more deserving of this award. Another, at least controversial decision of the HFPA was the award of the Golden Globe to Kim Hunter, the performer of the role of Stella, while Vivien Leigh was left without an award. A little later, Elia Kazan's film "A Streetcar Named Desire" received 12 Oscar nominations. The American Film Academy awarded its award to both Vivien Leigh and Kim Hunter. But in the most important categories - Best Film and Best Director - Elia Kazan and his work again remained no reward.
In 1953, Elia Kazan's film "A Streetcar Named Desire" received two nominations from the British Film Academy. But British film academies once again showed their xenophobia-light by awarding the BAFTA award to David Lean's rather mediocre but British film "The Sound Barrier" for both Best British Film and Best Film from Any Source. Films such as Akira Kurosawa's "Rashomon", Charles Chaplin's "Limelight", Luis Buñuel's "Olvidados", Stanley Donen's and Gene Kelly's "Singing in the Rain" did not receive British Academy Awards. But Vivien Leigh as Best British Actress for her role in film "A Streetcar Named Desire" won a BAFTA award.
As for the reviews of Elia Kazan's film "A Streetcar Named Desire" by the most authoritative film critics, they can be described in two words: "universal delight". Even Bosley Crowther, who was distinguished by a very picky and caustic attitude to film premieres and did not miss a single opportunity to find fault with the shortcomings of the new film, wrote a very laudatory review of the film literally the next day of its premiere in New York. "Out of Tennessee Williams's "A Streetcar Named Desire," which gathered up most of the drama prizes that were awarded when it was playing on Broadway, director Elia Kazan and a simply superlative cast have fashioned a motion picture that throbs with passion and poignancy. Indeed, through the haunting performance England's great Vivien Leigh gives in the heart-breaking role of Mr. Williams' deteriorating Southern belle and through the mesmerizing moods Mr. Kazan has wreathed with the techniques of the screen, this picture, now showing at the Warner, becomes as fine, if not finer, than the play. Inner torments are seldom projected with sensitivity and clarity on the screen."
According to American film critic guru Roger Ebert, who gave the film 4 out of 4 stars, the film was initially heavily criticized. In his 1993 review, he wrote: "When "A Streetcar Named Desire" was first released, it created a firestorm of controversy. It was immoral, decadent, vulgar and sinful, its critics cried. And that was after substantial cuts had already been made in the picture, at the insistence of Warner Bros., driven on by the industry's own censors. Elia Kazan, who directed the film, fought the cuts and lost. For years the missing footage - only about five minutes in length, but crucial - was thought lost. But this 1993 restoration splices together Kazan's original cut, and we can see how daring the film really was. The 1951 cuts took out dialogue that suggested Blanche DuBois was promiscuous, perhaps a nymphomaniac attracted to young boys. It also cut much of the intensity from Stanley's final assault of Blanche."" On my own behalf, I’ll add that in the film, under the influence of censorship requirements, the reason for the suicide of Blanche’s first husband, which was voiced very clearly in the play, was not clarified: the ridicule of those around him because of his homosexuality.
Despite the fact that the film was released many decades ago, modern moviegoers rate it no less highly than the audience of the early 50s of the last century. 69% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users rated the film 8 or higher. Taking into account this indicator and the above, Elia Kazan's film "A Streetcar Named Desire" rating according to FilmGourmand version was 8,803, thanks to which it took 216th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
And finally, some additional information. Perhaps not everyone knows where the name of the play by Tennessee Williams and, accordingly, the film by Elia Kazan came from. From the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries, several dozen streetcar routes operated in New Orleans. Unlike most other cities, where tram routes are designated by numbers, in New Orleans it sometimes had very poetic names, for example, "Esplanade", or "Napoleon", or "Coliseum". One of the routes was called "Desire". Here on the tram of this route, Blanche Dubois got from the railway station to the house of her sister Stella.
And further. During the presentation of his film in Santa Barbara, Elia Kazan met with his acquaintance, a young and little-known actress. He introduced this actress to his friend, the famous writer and playwright Arthur Miller. The name of this actress is Marilyn Monroe. What happened next, Monroe fans are well aware.