Tennessee Williams wrote the play "A Streetcar Named Desire" in 1947, and it starred Marlon Brando on Broadway. In 1951 the movie version, directed by Elia Kazan, also starred Marlon Brando. Brando played the lead role of Stanley Kowalski in both versions. On Broadway Jessica Tandy played Blanche DuBois and in the motion picture Vivian Leigh took on the role.
When the play was staged on Broadway, the New York Times said that it "reveals Mr. Williams as a genuinely poetic playwright whose knowledge of people is honest and thorough and whose sympathy is profoundly human " (Beckerman 286). The movie also served the text well, and most critics point out that it has become a classic over the years.
Pauline Kael agreed with the fact that the main characters continued to be powerful in the screen version. She had reservations about Elia Kazan's direction (he had directed the play on Broadway), saying that it was too stagey and the arrangement of actors was too transparently "worked out."
This being said, she still concluded: "But who cares when you're looking at two of the greatest performances ever put on film and listening to some of the finest dialogue ever written by an American?" (Kael 564)
The dialogue that Kael is speaking of is especially wellwritten from Blanche's standpoint. In the final scene, as she is talking with her sister Stella she says: "I can smell the sea air. The rest of my time I'm going to spend on the sea. And when I die, I'm going to die on the sea " (Williams 136).
There is no question that Williams has a great deal of affection for Blanche. He sees her as a very vulnerable woman, who needs the illusions of her past to keep her alive in the present. Stanley is the dark side of Williams, and Brando was able to portray an animal of a man who was locked in a love-hate relationship with his wife's sister.
Kazan was an excellent choice for the film adaptation because he had directed the p...