Old Hollywood
Cinema
1900-1979
Nostalgia is a seductive liar - George Wildman Ball
Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951, dir. Elia Kazan) “The thing about the ‘tradition’ in the 19th century was that it worked then. It made a woman feel important, with her own secure positions and functions, her own special worth. It also made a woman at that time one with her society. But today it is an anachronism. So Blanche requires protection - a haven, a harbor. She is a refugee, punch drunk and on the ropes, making her last stand, trying to keep up a gallant front, because she is a proud person. But still - she’s also a misfit, a liar, her ‘airs’ alienate people…She doesn’t know how to make a living. She doesn’t know to work…She’s a last dying relic of the last century now adrift in our unfriendly day.” -Elia Kazan on Blanche

Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951, dir. Elia Kazan)

“The thing about the ‘tradition’ in the 19th century was that it worked then. It made a woman feel important, with her own secure positions and functions, her own special worth. It also made a woman at that time one with her society. But today it is an anachronism. So Blanche requires protection - a haven, a harbor. She is a refugee, punch drunk and on the ropes, making her last stand, trying to keep up a gallant front, because she is a proud person. But still - she’s also a misfit, a liar, her ‘airs’ alienate people…She doesn’t know how to make a living. She doesn’t know to work…She’s a last dying relic of the last century now adrift in our unfriendly day.”

-Elia Kazan on Blanche

Alex North - New Orleans Street (A Streetcar Named Desire: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951, dir. Elia Kazan)

Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951, dir. Elia Kazan)

Alex North - Main Titles (A Streetcar Named Desire: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951, dir. Elia Kazan) “The audience at the beginning should see her negative effect on Stella and want Stanley to tell her off. He does, he exposes her, and then we gradually see how genuinely in pain, how actually desperate she is, how warm, tender, and loving she can be (the Mitch story) - then we begin to go with her. The audience realizes that they are witnessing the death of something extraordinary - colorful, varied, lost, witty, imaginative, of her own integrity - and thus they feel the tragedy.  Blanche, out of place, unappreciated, a stranger in the modern, rough, coarse South; yet despite sickness and unbalance, she has more warmth than any of them. It is important symbolically that Blanche is an English teacher. She is the last repository of culture, abandoned, not prized, deformed, destroyed, gone begging for protection. At the end, the grandeur and nobility belong to Blanche, and the “victors”, Stella and Stanley, are left with each other, a relationship of vulgar crudity and, for Stella, of growing emptiness and terror. (Also, Tennessee [Williams] wants desperately to be with other people, yet be superior to them.)” -Elia Kazan, quoted in Kazan on Directing

Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951, dir. Elia Kazan)

“The audience at the beginning should see her negative effect on Stella and want Stanley to tell her off. He does, he exposes her, and then we gradually see how genuinely in pain, how actually desperate she is, how warm, tender, and loving she can be (the Mitch story) - then we begin to go with her. The audience realizes that they are witnessing the death of something extraordinary - colorful, varied, lost, witty, imaginative, of her own integrity - and thus they feel the tragedy. 

Blanche, out of place, unappreciated, a stranger in the modern, rough, coarse South; yet despite sickness and unbalance, she has more warmth than any of them. It is important symbolically that Blanche is an English teacher. She is the last repository of culture, abandoned, not prized, deformed, destroyed, gone begging for protection.

At the end, the grandeur and nobility belong to Blanche, and the “victors”, Stella and Stanley, are left with each other, a relationship of vulgar crudity and, for Stella, of growing emptiness and terror. (Also, Tennessee [Williams] wants desperately to be with other people, yet be superior to them.)”

-Elia Kazan, quoted in Kazan on Directing

Alex North -  Belle Reve Reflections (A Streetcar Named Desire: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951, dir. Elia Kazan)

Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951, dir. Elia Kazan)

Alex North - Mania (A Streetcar Named Desire: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951, dir. Elia Kazan) “Blanche is a woman with everything stripped away. She is a tragic figure and I understand her. But playing her tipped me into madness.”  (via)

Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951, dir. Elia Kazan)

“Blanche is a woman with everything stripped away. She is a tragic figure and I understand her. But playing her tipped me into madness.” 

(via)