Product Description

A Streeetcar Named Desire: The Original Director's Version is the Elia Kazan/Tennessee Williams film moviegoers would have seen had not Legion of Decency censorship occurred at the last minute. It features three minutes of previously unseen footage underscoring among other things the sexual tension between Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh) and Stanley Kowalski (Marlon Brando) and Stella Kowalski's (Kim Hunter) passion for husband Stanley. Catch all of the classic - nominated for 12 Academy AwardsO including Best Picture and winner of 4* - that introduced a new era of filmmaking. Step aboard this Streetcar.Running Time: 122 min.System Requirements:Running Time 122 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: NR UPC: 085393893224 Manufacturer No: 38932

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2215 in DVD
• Brand: Warner Brothers
• Released on: 2006-05-02
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Original recording remastered, Special Edition, Subtitled, NTSC
• Original language: English, Spanish
• Subtitled in: English, French, Spanish
• Dubbed in: French
• Number of discs: 2
• Dimensions: .30 pounds
• Running time: 122 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
Looking for a benchmark in movie acting? Breakthrough performances don't come much more electrifying than Marlon Brando's animalistic turn as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. Sweaty, brutish, mumbling, yet with the balanced grace of a prizefighter, Brando storms through the role--a role he had originated in the Broadway production of Tennessee Williams's celebrated play. Stanley and his wife, Stella (as in Brando's oft-mimicked line, "Hey, Stellaaaaaa!"), are the earthy couple in New Orleans's French Quarter whose lives are upended by the arrival of Stella's sister, Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh). Blanche, a disturbed, lyrical, faded Southern belle, is immediately drawn into a battle of wills with Stanley, beautifully captured in the differing styles of the two actors. This extraordinarily fine adaptation won acting Oscars for Leigh, Kim Hunter (as Stella), and Karl Malden (as Blanche's clueless suitor), but not for Brando. Although it had already been considerably cleaned up from the daringly adult stage play, director Elia Kazan was forced to trim a few of the franker scenes he had shot. In 1993, Streetcar was rereleased in a "director's cut" that restored these moments, deepening a film that had already secured its place as an essential American work. --Robert Horton

On the DVD
An exemplary selection of supporting material makes this second disc much more than a throw-in. Richard Schickel's lucid 90-minute profile, Elia Kazan: A Director's Journey, gives a fine account of the Kazan career, including lesser-known but worthy films such as Wild River and America, America. (One wonders, however, why a documentary about the art of a director can't letterbox its widescreen clips.) Kazan's work, rather than his fascinating life, is the focus, and his cooperative testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s is given a brief, neutral treatment. Clips from those Kazan interviews figure in two shorter docs, a look at the origins of Streetcar on Broadway (and the way Marlon Brando's performance threatened to tip the balance of the play) and a thorough half-hour history of the movie adaptation. A nine-minute profile of Brando is mostly an excuse for reminiscences from Karl Malden, but they are wonderful memories indeed. (Malden also contributes his sharp recollections and wise insights to a commentary track on the film, along with film writers Rudy Behlmer and Jeff Young, all recorded separately.) A ten-minute look at composer Alex North's contribution is informative and smart. Outtakes here are really a collection of snippets, of interest to fanatics. A Brando screen test is surprisingly ordinary, although one can see hints of the tiger waiting to escape. --Robert Horton

Customer Reviews

Stunning
I continue to be impressed by young Brando. I grew up hearing how much an acting genius Brando was in his hey day and I thought for the most part he was over-rated. Course, I was coming from the angle of the older Brando. Now after watching On the Waterfront and now Streetcar, I've been more than blown away. Brando absolutely deserves his accolades. In streetcar, he plays Stanley to the tee. You don't catch him acting at all. You whole heartedly believe him as this animal of a husband and you despise him for what he's doing to an obvious delusional woman. I even feel for Stella being caught between two different people she loved. I agree the material is stunning for its time and I continue to be impressed with Kazan's direction. This movie deserved all its accolades. If you haven't seen it, you're doing yourself a disserve.

Magnificent Interpretation
Elia Kazan's "Streetcar Named Desire" is a wonderful interpretation of William's classic play. Like many of Tennessee William's plays "Streetcar" depicts the moral ruination of the post-civil war South. Blanche Dubois, in particular, is tragic and represents a "belle idee" gone hopelessly wrong. We learn how she has tried but failed to hold the old family home and honor intact. As a school teacher in Oriole, Mississippi she has failed in the most terrible way possible. She has not only prostituted herself but has seduced young school-age boys. As a consequence, despite her faded aristocracy, she has been run out of town and wound up on the doorstep of her sister, a woman quite content to reach for the gutter.

Her Pollack brother-in-law, played by Marlon Brando, is so miserable that he's great. He takes every opportunity to insult his freeloading sister-in-law and--with his wife in the hospital having a baby--he plumbs the depths of his own depravity and rapes the frightened and increasingly confused Blanche.

Blanche, who had a fleeting opportunity to marry the naive Karl Maldon, sees her opportunity torn away from her when Maldon learns the black truth of her Oriole history. Blanche retreats into madness. She finally meets her aristocratic savior in the form of an elderly physician who arrives to take her to a mental institution. "No one", as Ray Charles sang, "is saved." The film is beautiful in its horror.

Ron Braithwaite author of novels--"Skull Rack" and "Hummingbird God"--on the Spanish Conquest of Mexico

A Streetcar Named Desire
One of the best movies ever made, great performances all around, especially Brando, even though he was the only main actor in the movie that didn't win an Oscar. DVD quality superb.