(Directed Elia Kazan)
by Kevin Murphy
To note: in Charleston, the proximity of Vickery’s bar to the rest of downtown is always close enough to justify a visit. And so it was on a recent afternoon when the temperature was still too hot for responsibility.
Plus, I was with Joey, and he was thirsty.
We’d just finished watching ‘A Streetcar Named Desire,’ a film that never fails to inspire action, and decided to hoof the couple blocks to the dim quiet of our favorite watering hole.
We arrived before three, the only patrons save a weathered vampire sucking on a PBR. The bartender was a pretty bird with red hair. She fluttered, ready to pour.
Joey flopped his long arms across the bar, clawed his hair and cried, “Hey Stella. Stella!”
Birdie twittered, reached into her icy nest, and popped the caps off two cold ones.
If this were a discussion about beer, here’s where I’d tip my hat to Stella’s deliciousness.
But this story is better concerned with Joey, his desperation and the familiar plea to the woman (or beer) of his dreams.
In fact, anyone ever calling the name Stella is officially indebted to Tennessee Williams. As for cultural relevance and posterity, it’s Stanley Kowalski’s (Brando) guttural moan that’s been carved into the vernacular.
Vernacular being the language of the present, how can a line first penned in 1946 manage to roll from the tongue of today’s barstool?
Simple.
The existence of a unique and formidable expression experiences multiple lives. What was initially an ardent call for forgiveness is now the battle cry for Belgian beer.
Don’t fault Joey, though.
Actually, I was glad for his reenactment, as it brought to life one of America’s great dramas. And it confirmed ‘Streetcar’s’ significance in the American psyche.
Psyche, there’s a word with ties. It originated as the Greek conception of the self. In mythology, Psyche was a cosmic beauty who was adored by Eros.
Blanche Dubois seems to have arisen from the same ancient thunder. She is delusional to the point that her self-conception is in constant flux, moving from the classic southern beauty to the classic southern nightmare. Like the goddess Psyche, she is desired and envied by the masses. But like a psychotic, these concepts are merely formed in her mind as a result of her overwhelming insecurity and need for attention.
And attention must be paid! To her and the rest of the characters living in these tumbledown New Orleans streets, for they are sweltering under a steamy blanket of desire, division, and loyalty.
These are the questions posed in the film: What happens when a beautiful, vulnerable woman seeks solace in her sister’s home, only to be harassed by her brutish husband? And to what end will the husband go to discover the truth of his sister in law’s suspicious past? Furthermore, how will any of these systematically unhinged people survive the ordeal? To make matters worse, thematic vultures soar overhead, dangling sex, ethnicity, and truth as the fateful carrion ready to bring all the walls tumbling down.
Familiar with the concept of tumbling walls was Elia Kazan, this film’s director. Although he testified before the House of Un-American Activities Committee after ‘Streetcar’ was made, his decision to disclose the names of people involved in Communist activities during the post-war Red Scare is an interesting element in the evolution of an artist. Whether the traits of a man’s character are inherent, and therefore emerge at various stages in his life, might stoke the analysis of Kazan’s preoccupation with betrayed trust, fractured people, and painful endings.
For some of his colleagues and admirers, Kazan’s capitulation to pressure from Hollywood studios defined his career. It brought him shame and alienation, as well as triumph, especially in ‘On the Waterfront,’ his Academy Award winning manifesto about class, corruption, and integrity.
Terry Malloy, played by Marlon Brando, embodied the integrity of ‘On the Waterfront’. He is selfless and self-consumed, a man at odds with his soul. Six years before Malloy, Brando was burning Broadway white with his complete character inhabitation of Stanley Kowalski. On the screen, Brando incorporated that same boiled gusto, and delivered to mainstream audiences the larger-than-life complexities of a man destined to go down in American film history.
‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ is actually the story of Blanch Dubois. She is the tortured belle rushing from the lost property of her past to Stella and Stanley’s jagged lives. Played with dramatic lunacy by Vivien Leigh (Gone with the Wind), Blanche never quite convinces anyone (except a potential suitor) that she is even close to all right in the head, though Stella does turn a blind eye in the name of her family. Leigh’s performance is wrenching (Best Actress, 1951), but her mental predicament lends Stanley the spotlight as the truly challenged person in this problematic troupe. It’s through Blanche’s deficiency that Stanley emerges as the more interesting character, and it’s through Stanley’s aggression towards Blanche that Brando begins haunting us with his talents.
The musical score and the cinematography contribute to the building tension. Shadows spread across Blanche’s eyes. Stanley juts like an imprisoned jaguar as strings and snares tease his nerves. Light bulbs shatter, headlights curve across alleyways, train tracks and gin joints, poker and smoke, torn clothes and tousled hair, the brutality and sweat of desire are balanced with sturdy camera movements and corresponding bursts of music.
When this film burst on the screen in 1951, it solidified Brando as the preeminent actor of his era, garnered Kazan further directorial accolades, and generally established a superior production level of performance, writing, and direction.
Now, sixty years on, Tennessee Williams’s hot-blooded drama survives just as much as the image of your sketchy neighbor walking naked across the yard.
What?
Well, if you’ve never seen something like that, you’ll probably hear about it from someone who has. And if you have, you’ll never forget it.
Just like Joey, five hours deep at Vickery’s.
Here’s Joey paraphrasing Blanche Dubois: ‘“That’s the thing about New Orleans, an hour isn’t an hour. It’s just a little piece of eternity dropped in our hands. But sometimes I swear, it gets dark so quickly.’”
Joey drapes his hand against his forehead, takes one last look at the night, and collapses across the bar.
Exeunt.
