CinemaLit - A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

November 1 - A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), 125 minutes, directed by Elia Kazan, starring Vivien Leigh, Marlon Brando, and Kim Hunter.

A Streetcar Named Desire will be co-hosted by film historian Lara Gabrielle.

Brando’s smoldering, mercurial, vulnerable and thuggish man-child Stanley Kowalski remains perhaps the most blistering depiction of wounded and abusive masculinity ever put on film. Stanley lives in a cramped apartment in the humid French Quarter of New Orleans with his wife Stella. Their sex-charged life is disturbed with the arrival of Stella’s emotionally fragile sister Blanche DuBois, played in a for-the-ages performance by Vivien Leigh. Both the original stage version and film of Streetcar were directed by Elia Kazan, who would go on to direct Brando in two of his three subsequent Oscar nominated performances.

November 2024 CinemaLit - The Marlon Brando Centennial

Amazing but true - Marlon Brando (1924-2004) was born 100 years ago. Amazing because his performances, particularly the early ones, continue to appear fresh, alive, and spontaneous. And deeply influential. The aspiration among actors to be “the next Marlon Brando” is so widespread it’s become cliché. And it hasn’t happened. There will never be another Marlon Brando.

Brando was born on April 3, 1924 in Omaha, Nebraska. His father was a traveling salesman; his mother was a stage actress. Brando attended a military academy, but his ambitions were with acting. He moved to New York, where he studied with famed drama coach Stella Adler. Under her guidance, Brando thrived. He could aggravate his fellow actors with mumbling and unpredictability, but he honed a performance style that was volatile, idiosyncratic, and absolutely spellbinding.

Brando created the indelible Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway in 1947; a few years later came Streetcar on film, catapulting him to the top ranks of major new movie stars. Streetcar brought him his first Best Actor Academy Award nomination, and he followed that with three more in as many years. He finally won the award on his fourth nomination, for 1954’s On the Waterfront.

For our Brando tribute, we’re screening three of those first performances that captured the Academy’s attention and admiration. (His other nomination in this period was for Viva Zapata! (1952), a film worthy of attention.) Come see what all the fuss was about with A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), Julius Caesar (1953), and On the Waterfront (1954).

Event Venue

Mechanics' Institute, Mechanics' Institute, San Francisco, United States