Diegetic Sound In The Film A Streetcar Named Desire

A Streetcar Named Desire is written by Tennessee Williams, and later filmed by Elia Kazan as director in 1951. The play depicts a story of Blanche Dubois, who is exiled from her hometown and go to her sister Stella for shelter, loses her mind due to her inappropriate and flirtatious behavior and intense desires of love, beauty and youth. In order to present such human tragedy on the movie screen, director of the film, Elia Kazan, make elaborate and meticulous choices, arrangement and organization the setting of scenes, on the use of diegetic sound, and costumes.
In order to highlight the acting in A Streetcar Named Desire, the director reduce the change of settings and concentrate most scenes on the same place. The two-story building that Stella
The “Blue Piano” is a stage direction written by Williams, and he states in the opening stage directions that “it expresses the spirit of the life” of Elysian Fields(3). It is invoked in the scenes of great passion of sexuality and desire; for example in Scene 5 when Blanche flirts with and kisses the young newspaper man, and the “blue piano” continues through the scene until the young man leaves, which indicates the intense sexual desire of Blanche toward the young man. Otherwise, “blue piano” presents the most in the scenes of Stella’s lustful reunion with Stanley in Scene 3, Blanche’s rape in Scene 9, as well as at the very beginning and end of the play, which are the two periods that the Kowalskis live without the presence of Blanche. The Varsouviana polka emphasizes the themes of death. The Varsouviana is diegetic only for Blanche; when audiences hear the polka, they are actually hearing what is inside her mind. This music plays when she is recalling her husband and when she feels emotionally threatened, and it serves to highlight her corrupted sanity. Blanche can only shake off the auditory hallucination till the Varsouviana gets to the gunshot that ended her husband’s life. Other sounds in the film serves as a ordinary diegetic sound and pushes the plot forward. Blanche’s
In Scene 3, the men sitting around the poker table wearing “colored shirts, solid blues, a purple, a red-and-white check, a light green”(46) imply their social status of working class. Stanley always wears tank top in the film, which reveals his masculine nature and hot temper. In addition, their sweatiness accents the effectiveness of the hot atmosphere and emits strong charm of wildness, because “they are men at the peak of their physical manhood, as coarse and direct and powerful as the primary colors”(46). In the contrast, the floating and effervescent dresses worn by Blanche reveals her superficiality, vanity and lack of money sense. Williams gives the audience the first image of Blanche in the opening stage direction: her “appearance is incongruous to this setting. She is daintily dressed in a white suit with a fluffy bodice, necklace and earrings of pearl, white gloves and hat, looking as if she were arriving at a summer tea or cocktail party in the garden district”(5). It leads the audience to expect quite a different character to emerge than the vulnerable and shaky woman who begins to display her neuroses and obsessions in the play. Blanche always wears the clothes and jewelry she brings to Kowalskis, since she lives in the illusion she creates, and she doesn't want to come back to the reality and look ahead.
Settings, diegetic sound and costume are all significant