Marlon Poffo

There are three reasons for watching A Streetcar Named Desire: Brando. Brando. Brando.

Marlon Brando's bestial heat still flares off that black and white celluloid like the flashpots from the third row of a KISS concert. It is obvious why his work in this movie has been lauded, critiqued, dissected, imitated, codified and ultimately iconicized - it's absolutely astounding! To this day, few have captured that feral rawness and "natural-ness" that he exuded; an actor boldly pioneering a new style, a bravura "Method." The viewing medium becomes all too two-dimensional when he is not onscreen.

On the other hand, Vivien Leigh's acting style, though lauded by film aficionados as a symbiotic, diametric marriage of intensity with Brando's, is just plain hard to watch and truthfully quite embarrassing at points. For modern viewers, she cannot seem to "convince" with her old-school Presentational/Theatrical style, clashing irreconcilably with Brando's Method.

The icy romance between Leigh and Karl Malden's character only serves to pound home the truth that sexual morés have moved too far from filmic 50s etiquette, to be in any way considered vital or even interesting to modern viewers, even though, for its day, much censorship was brought down upon Streetcar. So we are left with an inordinate amount of yapping that Leigh inflicts on Malden; enough to make any man turn to drink, drugs, other women, other men, football, synchronized swimming or forsaking humanity and leaving for outer space like Chuck Heston in Planet Of The Apes.

During Leigh's incessant rambles, strewn passim to illustrate her neuroticism, one continually wonders whether one is missing innuendo which was considered innuendo Back Then but which is now simply naiveté, or whether there was any innuendo courted at all and it was as innocent and puling as it sounded. Ultimately, it is too taxing to pretend filmic sophistication and dissect character motivation - on a pure enjoyment level, Leigh delivers only to historians and Serious Critics.

Surely, 'The Play's The Thing' and the story is as vital now as it was then (that of the estranged sister - Leigh - with the profligate and promiscuous past attempting to excise her demons by immersing herself in a new life with her sister and brother-in-law - Kim Hunter and Brando), but the manner in which this tale is purveyed has dated, the only vital remaining aspect being Brando.

Brando.

Brando.


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