Streetcar Named Desire Themes

How effectively does the film portray the key themes and characters of Williams play?
In 1949, Tennessee Williams released a novel entitled “A Streetcar named Desire”. Two years later Elia Kazan directed and released a movie based on the novel. She tried to recreate the film as closely as she could to the written play. How well did Kazan do this? Did she leave out key parts or did she cover them all? Did she model the characters perfectly according to the novel? Was she spot on or was she way off mark? Does time and era play a part? Are acting, filming techniques and movies different now compared to 1951? Does this create a biased response?

There were many themes in “A Streetcar named Desire”. One of them was violence. There was violence
in the streets, the Hubble home and the Kowalski home. I felt that violence was clearer in the film because you see it. As violence is fairly confronting, the images of the film stay in your head. They are stronger in the film than how you can imagine it in your mind. Stanley was the most violent person, but I found that Stanley was violent less often. Therefore, this theme weakened. To me, there was less violence but it was more obvious.
The same affect with male dominance. Scenes were added and removed, which weakened this theme. The last scene of the film completely contradicts the meaning of male dominance and female submission. The last scene, when the doctor takes Blanche away, is different in the film than in the book. In the book, Stella decides to trust her husband and stay with him, no matter what she has heard from her sister. In the film, Stella gains total control and runs away. She is no longer submissive to the man of the house. I believe that this tiny change alters many meanings of the story. Another relationship that contradicts this theme would be the Hubble’s. Eunice is clearly in charge in every circumstance. In the movie, this theme of male dominance and female submission does not exist.
Fantasy and illusion is always present in the novel, at times it was stronger, but it was always there. I felt that the film lacked many of the symbols that emphasised and built this theme. For instance the shadows along walls, the song “it’s only a paper moon” and bathing. As the scenes were often dark, we were not able to see Blanche’s imaginary, peaceful worlds. We only saw the real one. In the novel, we were able to imagine these fantasies.
In the written play, Blanche shows how her desires lead her to become insane. The theme of desire and promiscuity is not as clear in the film. I do not think that the Blanche in the film was as outgoing and flirty.
Blanche often referred to Stanley as being beast-like and primitive. In the book, Stanley never seemed to be polite, loving or caring. In the film however, I found that he was only beast-like when he was angry. Other times he was quite kind. A main symbol that emphasised this theme was the meat-throwing incident at the beginning. This did not occur. So this theme was not portrayed properly.
There were plenty of lies in this story. Blanche’s lies covered up the truth to protect her dignity. I felt that in the film, Blanche’s lies were present but less of a fuss was made about them. She didn’t seem to have such a high dignity and she didn’t show off as much. She hid behind doorframes and in shadows more often.
One scene that the film portrayed correctly was the theme of death. The Mexican lady with the flowers, murky streets, the polka tune, Blanche’s terrified voice and gunshots were all displayed perfectly and it was very effective.

If Elia Kazan could get all of the characters as close to perfect as possible then the film would be almost spot on. Most of the characters were correct with the only differences were our perceptive of them.
I felt that Blanche’s character was bolder in the novel than she was portrayed as in the film.
She seemed less two-faced and more frightened. Because of this domineering personality, I saw Blanche as being taller and less fragile at the beginning and only deteriorating as the story progresses. She seemed less glamorous in the film in my perspective.
I saw Mitch to be a lot younger. He did not seem the type of person in the film that Blanche would be attracted towards. However, I think that Kazan had mastered his shy and awkward personality.
The characters I felt were shown accurately were Stella, the Mexican lady, Eunice, the young man and other minor characters. Kazan did an excellent job bringing these characters to life. I believe they are just as the book depicted them.
As many scenes and lines were cut, we didn’t hear all of the stories about Allan Grey and the Dubois Family. This is disappointing because they created a background for Blanche as well as Stella. Without knowing this information, it has changed the story slightly. Reading the book I felt sorry for Blanche and the way in which she was treated. Though in the film I felt as if the director wanted us to see it from Stella’s perspective and be on her
side.

The time that the book and film were created was over fifty years ago. Does this factor change our answers towards this topic? I do not think it does very much. As we are comparing a book to the movie and they were released just two years apart, time isn’t really such a big issue. We are comparing two things from the same time. But our perceptions of the movie are fifty years later. Movies date faster than books because time is a part of the visualisation in movies. We see exactly what the filmmaker wants to show us. Whereas in a book we imagine the other aspects such as time, and are able to change it according to our perception. In this example, we are able to better relate to the book than the movie. This is the only bias.

Elia Kazan attempted to recreate the story that Tennessee Williams wrote, into a movie. It is always hard to do such a task but I believe that Kazan did a great job at tackling this opportunity. There are always parts that she had to change, add and remove. Elia Kazan’s perception of the play differs largely to mine. A film based on a book, like this, is the director’s perceptions on how she sees the story. It is though their eyes not our own. I think that she portrayed the themes and characters as well as they could have been.