Word: streetcars
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...where a film star assumed a stage role and did it more than justice; she is superb. Williams put Blanche through quite a lot--probably too much to be credible--yet Leigh somehow conveys her tired, neurasthenic hopelessness, her mania for illusion. The errors which were made in translating Streetcar to the screen aren't really forgivable, but Leigh and Brando make them easy to forget...
...disliked even the idea of Stanley attacking Blanche, let alone its graphic illustration. So the climatic rape scene is not climactic but ambiguous, which leaves the close of the film, wherein Blanche is shown completely psychotic, highly unsatisfactory. Unless it is clear that there is a rape, one of Streetcar's themes is subverted and its resolution arbitrary rather than inevitable and tragic...
There was a time in Williams' career when he thought of himself as a disciple of D.H. Lawrence, so it is probably no accident that the opening paragraph of Lady Chatterley's Lover should share some of the mood of Streetcar...
...Streetcar offers an echo of that with Blanche's attempt to discover a reason for being and a way to go on in a time and a place which seem to provide neither hope nor comfort. Blanche arrives for her summer's stay with her sister and her sister's husband by riding a streetcar named Desire, transfering to one called Cemeteries and getting off at Elysian Fields--directions which Blanche recites with some appreciation of their import and which put pretty well up front precisely what point in her life she has reached. Unable to accept implication...
...STREETCAR has a larger scope than that of a character study. Blanche's ultimate tumble into psychosis is Williams' way of shedding a tear for the modern world, for her fall is caused by Stanley Kowalski, her brutish, sensual brother-in-law, and it is the Stanleys, Williams believes, who are taking over the world and leading it on a "dark march" toward atavism...