DVD Review- A Streetcar Named Desire The movie has long established itself as a classic, this DVD does the same instantly. In another successful attempt to prove they are producing the best Special Editions for catalogue titles, Warner hits it out of the park. The amazing amount of bonus material is only outdone by its quality, starting with the extraordinary audio commentary and ending with the newly discovered screen tests of one of cinemas legends.
When A Streetcar Named Desire made its Broadway debut, audiences were captivated by a young, unknown actor named Marlon Brando. Although he had only a supporting role as the violent, yet somehow charming Stanley Kowalski, he turned the balance of the play around completely. Playwright Tennessee Williams intended it to be the story of the fading Southern Belle Blanche DuBois - instead it became, as co-star Karl Malden put it, 'The Marlon Brando' show. When it came to adapting the play as a film, director Elia Kazan figured he could shift the balance back to Blanche (Vivien Leigh) through camera work and editing. But not even that could prevent the inevitable. With one of the best performances ever to grace the big screen, Brando out acts his more than able co-stars and turns the Pulitzer-Prize-winning play into an unforgettable event. Set in the French Quarter of New Orleans, the drama is set in motion with Blanche DuBois arriving in the city. Exiled from her Mississippi home for seducing a schoolboy, she takes the titular streetcar to her sister Stella (Kim Hunter). Claiming to be expelled of her home due to financial calamities, she arouses the suspension of Stella's brute husband Stanley. More than once the two polarizing characters collide, each dispute cracking the ladylike shell of Blanche some more. As her downward spiral accelerates, Blanche seeks refuge in the arms of Stanley's well-mannered poker buddie Mitch (Karl Malden). But when he turns out to be a lesser man than Blanche needs, she is heading for disaster... For this DVD release Warner Brother not only cleaned up the print to a pristine level, they also deliver the cut intended by Elia Kazan before the censors stepped in. With only a few minutes added and key scenes re cut, the movie is far more suggestive than its 1951 counterpart. Among the improvements, we get more hints at Blanche's troubled history and a more sexually charged explanation of the title A Streetcar named Desire. But as good as Tennessee Williams ' play and the adaptation of Elia Kazan is, we wouldn't be talking about a Special Edition for the movie if it wasn't for the sensational ensemble. Whether it is Vivien Leigh's take as the affected Southern Belle with hidden sexual hunger, Kim Hunter being completely under the spell of Stanley, or Mamma's Boy Karl Malden - you won't see many movies with better acting. Yet it all comes down to Marlon Brando, whose performance is hailed as one of the most influential in modern cinema, yet was denied the Oscar it deserved. In a role that is prone to overacting Brando manages not only to deliver the loud, outgoing aspects of Stanley, but the more subtle side as well, creating a fascinating and challenging character - and undermining all attempts of Elia Kazan to shift the balance of the play back the way Tennessee Williams once intended it. Nevertheless in his failure Kazan managed to deliver a cinematic masterpiece.
Streetcar - The Bonus Material DVD Audio Commentary by Karl Malden and film historians Rudy Behlmer and Jeff Young Behlmer talks about the background of the play and the movie, Young gets into details about the career of director Elia Kazan and Malden delivers the anecdotes about his work on both the play and the film.
Documentary about Elia Kazan who directed tennessee Williams´s plays and Arthur Miller´s plays: A Director's Journey': clips from his movies and interviews with the man himself. 75-minute.
'A Streetcar on Broadway': talks aboutthe origins of the play and its two-year-run on Broadway. Background information on Tennessee Williams who, while living in New Orleans, could see two streetcars from his window, one named Cemeteries, the other Desire - only one of many fascinating revelations about the origins of the story. Then it gets to the casting where we learn that Jessica Tandy got the lead role partly because her husband Hume Cronyn was good friends with Elia Kazan, who also directed the Broadway play. This is also the point where Karl Malden joins in, sharing some interesting stories about the two years in which he shared the dressing room with Marlon Brando. The latter wasn't supposed to be in the play, but when the casting of John Garfield and Burt Lancaster fell through, he made the role and the play, his own, prompting the legendary Kazan quote 'What shall I do about it? Tell him to be less good?'
Featurette 'A Streetcar in Hollywood' a play that broke records on Broadway was a hard sell in Hollywood, but moral issues lead a few studio bosses to turn down the chance of adapting it for the big screen. When they finally got Warner to commit, the next issue was the casting. Clearly Kazan wanted to get the original cast back, but the lack of stars (neither Brando, Malden or Tandy had made a name for themselves outside the theater) prohibited it, as Karl Malden analyzes it in this once again captivating 28-minute feature. In fact, he claims the only reason he and Brando got cast was that Jessica Tandy was axed in favor of Gone with the Wind-beauty Vivian Leigh, who earlier had performed the play in London under the direction of Laurence Olivier. The key players from the Broadway-featurette then go on to discuss the filming, which was done chronologically, and their character motivations.
Desire and Censorship: As controversial as The Da Vinci Code is today, it was nothing compared to the so-called 'Hays Code', a self-regulatory control system to get rid of sex, violence and blasphemy in movies. This 16-minute long featurette details the back and forth between the Studio and the censors and the effects on the movie. As good as the other extras are, this is probably the best of the bunch, since it gives us not only insights into the movie, but as well into the times in which it was shot. Even after the 'Hays Code'-bureau passed the movie it wasn't over. The catholic 'Legion of Decency' threatened to condemn the movie and prompted even more changes which is illustrated by a fascination split-screen-comparison of scenes from the 1951 theatrical version and the restored version seen on this DVD.
Featurette 'North and the Music of the South' This little 9-minute segment portrays Alex North, one of the most underrated film composers in history. Nominated for 14 Oscars, he was always on the losing side until the Academy awarded him with the first and only honorary Oscar given to a film composer. We are lead through this nice portrait by a protege of North, who convinced him to re-release some of his classic soundtracks, including the 2001-score that was famously rejected by Stanley Kubrick.
Marlon Brando Screen test: Much talked about these are five minutes of newly discovered Screen and Camera tests of Brando. They are not for A Streetcar Named Desire, but for East of Eden, nevertheless they are really interesting to watch.
SOBRE SEMINÁRIOS: Alunos que ainda não escolheram tópico para seminário precisam fazê-lo o quanto antes. S e não houver peças suficientes para todos, sugiro: 1) Who´s afraid of Virginia Woolf? de edward Albee; 2)Three Tall Women, também de Albee.3) Pygmalino, de Bernard Shaw. 4) The Madness of King George III, de Alan Bennett.
SOBRE FILMES PARA AUXILIAR A COMPREENSÃO DAS PEÇAS: Como não há tempo para vermos todos os DVds em sala de aula, assistiremos algumas cenas que alimentarão a discussão; o resto do DVD ficará por conta de vocês. Para estudar dramaturgia, ver as peças, ainda que transpostas para o cinema, é uma bela oportunidade de acompanhar a ação, o desenho das personagens, o ritmo, as pausas, o cenário, enfim, chega-se mais perto da arte dramática.
Death of a Salesman, Long Day's Journey into Night and A Streetcar Named Desire are probably the three finest plays in the American Canon.
Streetcar opened in New York in 1947 and changed American Theater forever.
The play was bold, daring, sensual and sexual. Greek tragedies contained murders, incest, infanticide, and in Streetcar Williams presented American audiences with a tragedy on a par with the Greek masters replete with rape, homosexualtiy and the beautifully doomed tragic hero, Blance Du Bois.
The great Jessica Tandy played Blanche and Marlon Brando stunned the theater world as the alluring, brutal Stanley Kowalski. Surrealistic music and lighting bathed the entire performance in a steamy, vibrant, lurid atmosphere.
Overnight, Marlon Brando's career was made and Tennessee Williams became an international celebrity. When Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman opened two years later, New York became the theater capitol of the world. The lights on Broadway never shown so brightly.
The Meaning of the Title: The play tales place in New Orleans and the names of the streetcar lines may seem very strange to us but actually they refer to two New Orleans neighborhoods -- Desire and Cemeteries. Cemeteries is famous because the graves are above ground in sculpted marble coffins. The city is at the mercy of the Mississippi delta and when people were first buried there in the late 18th Century, the bodies were pushed up out of the ground by the water table. That's why the practice of above ground burial began. (The Cemetary is now a huge tourist attraction.) The Old Quarter -- laid out in the 1700's -- hasn't changed much over the last several centuries. Anyway, Williams uses these names effectively to underscore one of the main themes of the play. As Blanche intimates several times, we live our lives as if on a streetcar of desire unable to control our sexual passions until the end of the line -- death.
Blanche has just been run out of her family's small southern town because she was having sex with a minor. So she travels to her sister's house where she will face the end of the line..... Stanley. He does not kill her but he brutally rapes her and pushes her over the edge mentally. She retreats into a fantasy world. Stanley has destroyed the conscious half of her life.
Stanley and Blance live on a section of the Old Quarter called the Elysian Fields, a classical reference. In Greek mythology, after death the soul would roam the underworld seeking a place of refuge. The souls of those favored by the Gods (poets, philosophers, statesmen, etc.) would go to a place called the Elysian Fields in the underworld where they would live out eternity in a state of drugged euphoria. This is the address Blanche asks about in the first scene. Stanley and Stella clearly live in a state of drugged frenzy -- Stanley drinks and he and Stella have a terrific sex life which Stella says leaves her tranquilly narcoticized. Stanley and Stella are not poets, but they live in a "place-after-death."
This ambiguity underscores another of Williams' themes - the dichotomy in human life between earthly lust and spiritual purity.We all hover somewhere between these irreconcilable poles ....Desire and Death. So Blanche takes a streetcar named Desire, exits at Cemeteries and looks for the Elysian Fields. At the end of the play Blanche is in her own Elysian Field.
Marlon Brando Streetcar named desire - Tennessee Williams
DVD Review- A Streetcar Named Desire
ResponderExcluirThe movie has long established itself as a classic, this DVD does the same instantly. In another successful attempt to prove they are producing the best Special Editions for catalogue titles, Warner hits it out of the park. The amazing amount of bonus material is only outdone by its quality, starting with the extraordinary audio commentary and ending with the newly discovered screen tests of one of cinemas legends.
When A Streetcar Named Desire made its Broadway debut, audiences were captivated by a young, unknown actor named Marlon Brando. Although he had only a supporting role as the violent, yet somehow charming Stanley Kowalski, he turned the balance of the play around completely. Playwright Tennessee Williams intended it to be the story of the fading Southern Belle Blanche DuBois - instead it became, as co-star Karl Malden put it, 'The Marlon Brando' show. When it came to adapting the play as a film, director Elia Kazan figured he could shift the balance back to Blanche (Vivien Leigh) through camera work and editing. But not even that could prevent the inevitable. With one of the best performances ever to grace the big screen, Brando out acts his more than able co-stars and turns the Pulitzer-Prize-winning play into an unforgettable event.
Set in the French Quarter of New Orleans, the drama is set in motion with Blanche DuBois arriving in the city. Exiled from her Mississippi home for seducing a schoolboy, she takes the titular streetcar to her sister Stella (Kim Hunter). Claiming to be expelled of her home due to financial calamities, she arouses the suspension of Stella's brute husband Stanley. More than once the two polarizing characters collide, each dispute cracking the ladylike shell of Blanche some more. As her downward spiral accelerates, Blanche seeks refuge in the arms of Stanley's well-mannered poker buddie Mitch (Karl Malden). But when he turns out to be a lesser man than Blanche needs, she is heading for disaster...
For this DVD release Warner Brother not only cleaned up the print to a pristine level, they also deliver the cut intended by Elia Kazan before the censors stepped in. With only a few minutes added and key scenes re cut, the movie is far more suggestive than its 1951 counterpart. Among the improvements, we get more hints at Blanche's troubled history and a more sexually charged explanation of the title A Streetcar named Desire. But as good as Tennessee Williams ' play and the adaptation of Elia Kazan is, we wouldn't be talking about a Special Edition for the movie if it wasn't for the sensational ensemble. Whether it is Vivien Leigh's take as the affected Southern Belle with hidden sexual hunger, Kim Hunter being completely under the spell of Stanley, or Mamma's Boy Karl Malden - you won't see many movies with better acting. Yet it all comes down to Marlon Brando, whose performance is hailed as one of the most influential in modern cinema, yet was denied the Oscar it deserved. In a role that is prone to overacting Brando manages not only to deliver the loud, outgoing aspects of Stanley, but the more subtle side as well, creating a fascinating and challenging character - and undermining all attempts of Elia Kazan to shift the balance of the play back the way Tennessee Williams once intended it. Nevertheless in his failure Kazan managed to deliver a cinematic masterpiece.
Streetcar - The Bonus Material DVD
ResponderExcluirAudio Commentary by Karl Malden and film historians Rudy Behlmer and Jeff Young
Behlmer talks about the background of the play and the movie, Young gets into details about the career of director Elia Kazan and Malden delivers the anecdotes about his work on both the play and the film.
Documentary about Elia Kazan who directed tennessee Williams´s plays and Arthur Miller´s plays: A Director's Journey': clips from his movies and interviews with the man himself. 75-minute.
ResponderExcluir'A Streetcar on Broadway': talks aboutthe origins of the play and its two-year-run on Broadway.
Background information on Tennessee Williams who, while living in New Orleans, could see two streetcars from his window, one named Cemeteries, the other Desire - only one of many fascinating revelations about the origins of the story. Then it gets to the casting where we learn that Jessica Tandy got the lead role partly because her husband Hume Cronyn was good friends with Elia Kazan, who also directed the Broadway play. This is also the point where Karl Malden joins in, sharing some interesting stories about the two years in which he shared the dressing room with Marlon Brando. The latter wasn't supposed to be in the play, but when the casting of John Garfield and Burt Lancaster fell through, he made the role and the play, his own, prompting the legendary Kazan quote 'What shall I do about it? Tell him to be less good?'
Featurette 'A Streetcar in Hollywood'
ResponderExcluira play that broke records on Broadway was a hard sell in Hollywood, but moral issues lead a few studio bosses to turn down the chance of adapting it for the big screen. When they finally got Warner to commit, the next issue was the casting. Clearly Kazan wanted to get the original cast back, but the lack of stars (neither Brando, Malden or Tandy had made a name for themselves outside the theater) prohibited it, as Karl Malden analyzes it in this once again captivating 28-minute feature. In fact, he claims the only reason he and Brando got cast was that Jessica Tandy was axed in favor of Gone with the Wind-beauty Vivian Leigh, who earlier had performed the play in London under the direction of Laurence Olivier. The key players from the Broadway-featurette then go on to discuss the filming, which was done chronologically, and their character motivations.
Desire and Censorship: As controversial as The Da Vinci Code is today, it was nothing compared to the so-called 'Hays Code', a self-regulatory control system to get rid of sex, violence and blasphemy in movies. This 16-minute long featurette details the back and forth between the Studio and the censors and the effects on the movie. As good as the other extras are, this is probably the best of the bunch, since it gives us not only insights into the movie, but as well into the times in which it was shot. Even after the 'Hays Code'-bureau passed the movie it wasn't over. The catholic 'Legion of Decency' threatened to condemn the movie and prompted even more changes which is illustrated by a fascination split-screen-comparison of scenes from the 1951 theatrical version and the restored version seen on this DVD.
ResponderExcluirFeaturette 'North and the Music of the South'
This little 9-minute segment portrays Alex North, one of the most underrated film composers in history. Nominated for 14 Oscars, he was always on the losing side until the Academy awarded him with the first and only honorary Oscar given to a film composer. We are lead through this nice portrait by a protege of North, who convinced him to re-release some of his classic soundtracks, including the 2001-score that was famously rejected by Stanley Kubrick.
Marlon Brando Screen test: Much talked about these are five minutes of newly discovered Screen and Camera tests of Brando. They are not for A Streetcar Named Desire, but for East of Eden, nevertheless they are really interesting to watch.
ResponderExcluirSOBRE SEMINÁRIOS: Alunos que ainda não escolheram tópico para seminário precisam fazê-lo o quanto antes. S
ResponderExcluire não houver peças suficientes para todos, sugiro: 1) Who´s afraid of Virginia Woolf? de edward Albee; 2)Three Tall Women, também de Albee.3) Pygmalino, de Bernard Shaw. 4) The Madness of King George III, de Alan Bennett.
SOBRE FILMES PARA AUXILIAR A COMPREENSÃO DAS PEÇAS:
ResponderExcluirComo não há tempo para vermos todos os DVds em sala de aula, assistiremos algumas cenas que alimentarão a discussão; o resto do DVD ficará por conta de vocês.
Para estudar dramaturgia, ver as peças, ainda que transpostas para o cinema, é uma bela oportunidade de acompanhar a ação, o desenho das personagens, o ritmo, as pausas, o cenário, enfim, chega-se mais perto da arte dramática.
Death of a Salesman, Long Day's Journey into Night and A Streetcar Named Desire are probably the three finest plays in the American Canon.
ResponderExcluirStreetcar opened in New York in 1947 and changed American Theater forever.
The play was bold, daring, sensual and sexual. Greek tragedies contained murders, incest, infanticide, and in Streetcar Williams presented American audiences with a tragedy on a par with the Greek masters replete with rape, homosexualtiy and the beautifully doomed tragic hero, Blance Du Bois.
The great Jessica Tandy played Blanche and Marlon Brando stunned the theater world as the alluring, brutal Stanley Kowalski. Surrealistic music and lighting bathed the entire performance in a steamy, vibrant, lurid atmosphere.
Overnight, Marlon Brando's career was made and Tennessee Williams became an international celebrity. When Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman opened two years later, New York became the theater capitol of the world. The lights on Broadway never shown so brightly.
The Meaning of the Title: The play tales place in New Orleans and the names of the streetcar lines may seem very strange to us but actually they refer to two New Orleans neighborhoods -- Desire and Cemeteries. Cemeteries is famous because the graves are above ground in sculpted marble coffins. The city is at the mercy of the Mississippi delta and when people were first buried there in the late 18th Century, the bodies were pushed up out of the ground by the water table. That's why the practice of above ground burial began. (The Cemetary is now a huge tourist attraction.) The Old Quarter -- laid out in the 1700's -- hasn't changed much over the last several centuries. Anyway, Williams uses these names effectively to underscore one of the main themes of the play. As Blanche intimates several times, we live our lives as if on a streetcar of desire unable to control our sexual passions until the end of the line -- death.
Blanche has just been run out of her family's small southern town because she was having sex with a minor. So she travels to her sister's house where she will face the end of the line..... Stanley. He does not kill her but he brutally rapes her and pushes her over the edge mentally. She retreats into a fantasy world. Stanley has destroyed the conscious half of her life.
Stanley and Blance live on a section of the Old Quarter called the Elysian Fields, a classical reference. In Greek mythology, after death the soul would roam the underworld seeking a place of refuge. The souls of those favored by the Gods (poets, philosophers, statesmen, etc.) would go to a place called the Elysian Fields in the underworld where they would live out eternity in a state of drugged euphoria. This is the address Blanche asks about in the first scene. Stanley and Stella clearly live in a state of drugged frenzy -- Stanley drinks and he and Stella have a terrific sex life which Stella says leaves her tranquilly narcoticized. Stanley and Stella are not poets, but they live in a "place-after-death."
This ambiguity underscores another of Williams' themes - the dichotomy in human life between earthly lust and spiritual purity.We all hover somewhere between these irreconcilable poles ....Desire and Death. So Blanche takes a streetcar named Desire, exits at Cemeteries and looks for the Elysian Fields. At the end of the play Blanche is in her own Elysian Field.