A Streetcar Named Desire

I saw A Streetcar Named Desire at the library the other day so I picked it up. The only thing I know about Streetcar is Brando, "Stellaaa" and the Simpson's musical version of it. I'd never seen one of the early Brando films before so it was interesting watching his performance. It looked like Brando was doing two things—performing and playing games. The game was trying to see if he could perform through disruptions—eating, scratching, flexing. Then he goes and turns the disruptions into performances. There's a section where he's throwing Blanche's coats around and a feather drifts into the air. Brando studies it—a moment that seems to take forever—then continues with his rant. Brando's method seemed to be less about naturalism and more about performing through novel problems.

It reminded me of Ben in a way. First of all, Ben has an earthy, compact look that reminds me of Brando. Maybe it's just the T-shirts. Second, Ben is always playing little games during his performances. Sometimes he's pretending to be a method actor and working through an emotion. Sometimes he tries to have no idea of what's going on, on purpose. At other times he tries to be a technical actor seeing what he can get away with—like miming the heaviness of a box in one scene, or seeing if he can make himself look hot and tired in another. I never call him on anything so that's why he always teases me about my non-directing. I guess I either don't notice until later or it doesn't seem to matter. Some director.

I was surprised that Vivien Leigh let herself look so bad. She looked perfect for the part and had the "fading Southern dame" thing down. At the beginning the whole thing was so theatrical and talky. But after awhile, either you get used to it, or the nature of the film changes. I don't know which.