"A Streetcar Named Desire ." ” was adapted from the play of the same name by Tennessee Williams. Although a lot of metaphorical content in the original work was deleted, it only showed the “tip of the iceberg” floating on the water. is quite in place. The black and white images are mottled and flickering, perfectly paving the way for this tragedy full of anxiety, fear and violence. The heroine Blanche's struggle is like the flimsy white moth wings on the black flame, maintaining a kind of restlessness that is about to die. Watching the movie once, I feel quite mentally exhausted.
The slender and graceful Blanche is debilitated and the brutal and ruthless Stanley. The late Vivien Leigh and the fledgling Marlon Brando. What a wonderful reflection. It can be said that Blanche needs the complexity and precision of Vivien Leigh, and Stanley needs the simple anger of Brando.
The extreme characteristics of these two characters are vividly displayed in the tearing of each other. Familiar with the play to a certain extent would rather abandon the moral torture. The so-called victory of violence, the demise of the weak, the rampant industrial civilization and the decline of spiritual civilization, all kinds of grand and universal propositions are not as attractive as these two living characters. We should pay attention to how thrilling and typical this escalating conflict is.
If in the original work of A Streetcar Named Desire, desire rapes the spirit, then in the movie, it is the original desire that rapes the anemic desire. I can't think of Blanche in the movie as a representation of pure spirit, she's a far cry from the guilty frailty of the original. Although I have considered the factor that the drama actor's background leads to the emphasis on performance, I finally attribute this to Vivien Leigh's personal characteristics - although the appearance is exquisite and almost perfect, Vivien Leigh's delicacy is not fragile, her delicate lines are flashing sharp, Desire has always been at the heart of her immortality.
Blanche was reinvented in Vivien Leigh. In the original work she is a dying white ghost, in the movie she is more like a more violent fire when it is extinguished. Many properties are determined by degree. The same set of lines was shown with more powerful acting skills, hope turned into hunger and ideals turned into vanity.
However, she was always a dying person. And he still wants to be her executioner. It's like two completely different graphs perfectly nested.
Marlon Brando's Stanley was a sturdy, handsome, talking animal, no more, no less. His words were as powerful as the roar of a beast, and his actions were filled with animal pleasure.
His beastly nature is most fully manifested in his relationship with his wife. Usually, he is an untamed beast. "...he's a stone age survivor! Bring home the raw meat after hunting in the jungle! And you--you're here--waiting for him to come home! He might hit you, might purr Kiss you again! That's after the kiss was invented!" And after the domestic violence—as we can see in that most intriguing scene—his docile wife descends from a high staircase Looking down at him from above, going down the steps, with a look of indifference like a queen; his "hound-like barking at his wife's name", depressed like a child, and then the almost unbelievable kneeling; Contrived illusory colors. "The two stared at each other. Then there was a low, animal whimper, and they hugged," and then, presumably, the sexuality that defused everything, condoned everything, and restarted everything.
This is the only relationship between Stanley and Stella (his wife, Blanche's sister). He inflicted on her physical abuse, she reciprocated the abuse of his dignity, and the two paid off with sex... and so on. It may be said that if people get along without civilization, there is only a relationship of domination and domination; they maintain a balance in the constant exchange of power. Blanche was alert to this. "The only way to live with a man like this is to have sex!" But her sister said, "But there is something that happens in the dark between a man and a woman—that makes It doesn't seem to matter anymore."
Arthur Miller said of Stanley, "He roared out Williams' proclamation of the horrors of sex, the ugly truth of sex, the ruthless referee, and with a sweeping authority. "Brando was a cruel beast, but he embodied the truth."
He put the well-bred Stella in the snares of the bestiality that was the essence of their marriage. And Blanche has been trying to pierce it since his arrival, which is one of his motives to destroy her. And the deeper motive—and one of the most pervasive—is the devouring of the weak by the strong. It should be noted that Stanley's rape of Blanche took place the night that Stalle gave birth.
"Well, today is our big day. You're going to catch an oil tycoon, and I'm going to have a baby." It can be said that Stanley made his subsequent actions in a happy state of mind. "...Let's turn our battles into jade and silk, how about a drink? Ha?" What drove him to act was a "reconciliation" mentality. However, this kind of "reconciliation" is not a reconciliation in the usual sense, but a "natural" "reconciliation" - the strong devour the weak.
I think the real ending for Blanche should be death. However, as a comedy dedicated to the masses, Lust should not be given such an "unjust" ending - so Blanche was put in a lunatic asylum, and Tennessee Williams added Stanley's cruelty to the censor's request. The plot of being rejected by friends and wives. And the famous "I always rely on the mercy of strangers" often leads to a sigh at the end, covering this twisted and deep story with a layer of ordinary moral meaning.
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