Thursday, August 4, 2011

Tonight at the Loft: "A Streetcar Named Desire"

Posted By on Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 9:18 AM

The Loft continues its series of films based on Tennessee Williams' work with the 1951 classic A Streetcar Named Desire.

More from the Loft website:

"A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE" / Southern Discomfort: The Films of Tennessee Williams
Thursday, August 4th at 7:00 p.m.
Regular admission prices
Featuring a free prize raffle and Mint Julep drink specials!

In acclaimed director Elia Kazan's juicy, hothouse movie version of his own Broadway smash (which garnered author Tennessee Williams his first Pulitzer Prize), faded Southern belle Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh) drifts into New Orleans with a head full of fantasies and delusions, and is destroyed by her brutish, sexually-charged brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski (Marlon Brando) — “two of the greatest performances ever put on film” (Pauline Kael).

A landmark Hollywood film in terms of its overwhelmingly seedy and sexual atmosphere and Brando's animalistic, peel-the-paint-off-the-walls performance (the likes of which had never before been seen on the screen), STREETCAR brilliantly evokes the claustrophobic passion and bruised psychology of William's stage classic, effectively raising the bar for all future onscreen depictions of sweat-soaked madness. Winner of five Oscars, including Best Actress (Vivien Leigh), Best Supporting Actress (Kim Hunter), and Best Supporting Actor (Karl Malden) ... although Brando walked away empty-handed, in one of Hollywood's most notorious examples of "just not getting it."

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