Michigan's Missing Glove

Ooh, let’s see how far we can take one metaphor about sex!

“What? We can make a full-length feature film about rape, domestic violence, and bipolar disorder out of it? AWESOME!” Said the Warner Brothers producers of A Streetcar Named Desire in 1951.

I didn’t care for the film, which cannot be called entertainment of any kind. Maybe it was because Netflix sent the Original Director’s Cut (which wasn’t allowed in theaters due to gracious censoring in the 50s), but Vivien Leigh was just plain disturbing as Blanche Dubois – and not in the deliciously harrowing way Gloria Swanson was as Norma Desmond. She shrieks histrionically at small upsets like an overly fizzy Coca-Cola, and her true fits made me want to throw her down some stairs, kick her in the chest a few times, and then give her some lithium for the ol’ manic-depressive. Plus, I was disturbed that I found the brutish Stanley Kowalski, played by a young and thus far unknown Marlon Brando, highly attractive. I guess I can’t be blamed, though. Brando was RIPPED in ’51! I mean, the studio even tried to use him to disguise Vivien Leigh’s disturbingly realistic performance and lure in audiences. (Seriously. Watch the clip: BRANDO! The man who lives with two women!)

So aside from Brando, I didn’t really care for it. What a waste of Netflix. Anna says Tennessee Williams wrote to be read anyway, so maybe I’ll have to try his plays in print form… once I work up enough patience to deal with him again.