Word: streetcars
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Outside the Astor Theatre, where "A Streetcar Named Desire" is now showing, a black sign pasted across a publicity shot of Marlon Brando's naked back proclaims: "Not Suitable for Children." In the current opinion of the Catholic Legion of Decency, "Streetcar" is suitable for a adults: but they didn't always think that way. The story of how they came to change their mind, told in last Sunday's Time by Elia Kazan, is an interesting case study of the methods of informal censorship...
Kazan, who directed "Streetcar," describes the studio's panic at the news, after the picture had been cleared by the Breen office but before it had been released, that it was marked for a "C" or "Condemned" rating by the Legion. What the studio heads feared, it seems, was not merely that Catholics would be instructed not to see it. "They feared ... that theatres showing the picture would be picketed, might be threatened with boycotts of as long as a year's duration if they dared to show it, that priests would be stationed in the lobbies to take down...
...unofficial censoring of "Streetcar" is significant for one reason only. It indicates that the censorship body of the Catholic Church has, in fact, achieved a degree of power prejudicial to the interests of the non-Catholic majority. The Legion of Decency was able to postpone the release date of a picture and reduce its producers to a state of helpless acquiescence, merely by sending a threatening glance in the direction of Hollywood. The capitulation of the studio was complete and final...
Like a cannon rolling loose on the deck of a frigate, Marlon Brando crashes through "Streetcar," malicious and violent. Screeching like a cat, walloping tables and women, peeling shirts off his sweaty muscles and tossing away his lines in a punchy, thick-lipped Polish accent, Brando fixes the attention of camera and audience until the sound of his voice seems a separate presence on the screen...
Brando's dominant position in the film version of "A Streetcar Named Desire" probably owes little to Tennessee Williams, who wrote both play and movie. Williams made almost no changes in adapting "Streetcar" to the screen, for reasons easy to understand. After setting every line in place in one of the most carefully structured plays on the modern stage, it was too much to expect that the author might try to create an essentially different work of art in the new medium. Instead the dialogue and plot follow the play almost exactly, and nearly all action is within the confines...