alr

A Streetcar Named Desire

L is for Leigh
Screening on Film
Directed by Elia Kazan.
With Vivien Leigh, Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter.
US, 1951, 35mm, black & white, 125 min.
Print source: HFA

Elia Kazan reunited much of the all-star cast from his hit Broadway production for this screen adaptation of Tennessee Williams’s famous play. Vivien Leigh brilliantly evokes the neurotic fragility of Blanche Dubois, a fallen southern belle whose pretences to gentility are put to the test when she comes to New Orleans to visit her sister, Stella (Hunter), and brutish brother-in-law, Stanley (Brando). Kazan melds gritty, cinematic realism with the stylized dialogue of the theater in this classic that made Brando a star and garnered Oscars for Leigh, Hunter, and Karl Malden.

Part of film series

Read more

Treasures from the Harvard Film Archive: Actors K–N

Other film series with this film

Read more

The Complete Elia Kazan

Current and upcoming film series

Read more

Fragments of a Faith Forgotten: The Art of Harry Smith

Read more

The Yugoslav Junction: Film and Internationalism in the SFRY, 1957 – 1988

Read more

From the Jenni Olson Queer Film Collection

Read more
a double-exposed image that includes a 16th century Russian man being fed grapes by another amid decadent decor

Wings of a Serf

Read more
a close-up of a Bissau-Guinean woman wearing a scarf on her head and looking directly at the camera with a slight smile

Le Dépays + Sans soleil

Read more
Peter Sellers wearing a large hat with "ME" embroidered on it, and gripping a Pilgrim-like collar

Carol for Another Christmas

Read more

Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy