The atmosphere is oppressive. Heat, humidity, alcohol and work turn Stanley Kowalski’s house into a pressure cooker. There jealousy and brutality of the favorite son of this proletarian class they make life inside the house unbearable. There he came, surprised, from Blanche DuBois, a southern lady with delusions of grandeur, refugee in an imaginary world, brave, arrogant and unbalanced, spend a season with his sister, married to Kowalski. These are the locations where Tennessee Williams got his start for portraying domestic violence in the unforgettable “A Streetcar Named Desire,” a work that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948..
Blanche’s story is one of a complete loss of touch with reality. He lies about his past in order to expand the time to show his ways. Stanley is just the opposite: a rough, hard-drinking, card-playing, conniving man. In between, Stella endures the mistreatment and contempt of Stanley while receiving judging and concerned looks from her sister, who does not understand how she has renounced her aristocratic background. Stella is physically and emotionally abusive, but tolerates this behavior because of her almost animal attraction to her husband.
Blanche’s arrival causes more temperature in the pressure cooker that is the house, cramped and dilapidated. The situation will only get worse and bring out the violence. At the end of the play, Blanche utters the character’s most memorable line: “I always depended on the kindness of strangers”, and he remembers all the disappointment he suffered when he was trying to make a man save him.
The montage premiered on Broadway in 1947, produced by Irene Mayer Selznick and directed by Elia Kazan, who wanted to bring them to be Margaret Sullavan and John Garfield, but finally settled for the little known Marlon Brando and Jessica Tandy. Mitch was played by Karl Malden, as he later ended up doing in the 1951 film version, with Vivian Leigh in the cast, along with Brando and Malden. The Hollywood Academy awarded the film four Oscars: Best Actress (Vivien Leigh), Best Supporting Actor (Karl Malden), Best Supporting Actress (Kim Hunter) and Best Black and White Art Direction.
The work brought fame and fortune to Tennessee Williams, published in 1955 “Cat on a Tin Roof”, with which he won another Pulitzer Prize. However, his tormented inner world still haunts him. Williams died in 1983 under mysterious circumstances, in a New York hotel.
