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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.

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