A Streetcar Named Desire (1951 Film) - Plot

Plot

Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh) is a fading, but nevertheless attractive Southern belle, whose pretensions to virtue and culture only thinly mask her alcoholism and delusions of grandeur. Her poise is an illusion she presents to shield others, and most of all herself, from reality to try to make herself still attractive to new male suitors. Blanche arrives from her hometown of Auriol, Mississippi at the apartment of her sister, Stella Kowalski (Kim Hunter), in the French Quarter of New Orleans, on Elysian Fields Avenue. The local transportation that she takes to arrive there includes a streetcar route named "Desire." The steamy, urban ambiance is a shock to Blanche's nerves.

Explaining that her ancestral southern plantation, Belle Reve in Auriol, Mississippi, has been "lost" due to the "epic fornications" of her ancestors, Blanche is welcomed with some trepidation by Stella, who fears the reaction of her husband, Stanley Kowalski (Marlon Brando). Blanche says her supervisor gave her time off her job as an English teacher because of her upset nerves. In truth, however, she was fired for having an affair with a 17-year-old male student. This turns out not to be the only seduction she had engaged in — and these problems led Blanche to run away from Auriol. A brief marriage scarred by the suicide of her spouse, Allan Grey, has led Blanche to live in a world in which her fantasies and illusions are seamlessly mixed with her reality.

In contrast to both the self-effacing and deferential Stella and the pretentious refinement of Blanche, Stanley is a force of nature: primal, rough-hewn, brutish and sensual. He dominates Stella in every way and is physically and emotionally abusive. Stella tolerates his behavior as this is part of what attracted her in the first place. Their love and relationship is heavily based on powerful, even animalistic, sexual chemistry - something that Blanche says that she finds impossible to understand, despite long glances of admiration and lust towards Stanley. The arrival of Blanche upsets her sister's and brother-in-law's system of mutual dependence. Stella's concern for her sister's well-being emboldens Blanche to hold court in the Kowalski apartment, infuriating Stanley and leading to conflict in his relationship with his wife. Stanley's friend and Blanche's would-be suitor, Harold "Mitch" Mitchell (Karl Malden), is trampled as Blanche and Stanley head for a collision course. Stanley discovers Blanche's past through a co-worker who travels to Auriol frequently. He confronts Blanche with the things she has been trying to put behind her, partly out of concern that her character flaws may be damaging to the lives of those in her new home (just as they were in Auriol), and partly due to resentment of her airs of superiority toward him and a distaste for pretense in general. However, his attempts to "unmask" her are predictably cruel and violent.

Their final confrontation — a rape — results in Blanche's nervous breakdown. Stanley has her committed to a mental institution. Mitch, knowing that Stanley raped Blanche and had her committed to a mental institution, lashes out and punches Stanley but is then held back by the other men, and he starts to weep. As the other men stare at Stanley, he claims he "never once touched her".

Devastated with her sister's fate, Stella weeps and rejects Stanley's intention to comfort her and pushes him away. Stella runs out to see Blanche off, but is too late, as the car Blanche left in has already gone. As he cries her name once more ("Stella! Hey, Stella!"), Stella clings to her child and vows that she is "never going back" to Stanley again. She goes upstairs once more in order to seek refuge with her neighbor, Eunice (Peg Hillias), as Stanley continues to call her name.