Evasions and
Ambiguities in A Streetcar Named Desire
It’s over 50 years since Elia
Kazan’s film of A Streetcar Named Desire was first screened. The Brando and
Leigh performances still make it well worth viewing, but is there any point in
exploring alterations made half a century ago, especially when the 1984 film
version has restored the original script to the big screen? Though this subject
is not new to The English Review, I think there is more to say about the
screenplay changes. They not only illuminate the controversial nature of the
play in its time, but also highlight Williams’ original intentions.
Condemned
Two censoring forces influence the 1951 film. Both had
sufficient clout to make a significant difference to box office takings, and no
film studio would ignore either. Warner Brothers panicked when it heard the
Catholic League of Decency (CLD) was about to award the film a ‘C’ rating
(that’s C for condemned, not caution). This meant that Catholics would be
instructed not view it and, as a result of the number of immigrants to the USA from Eastern Europe and Ireland,
Catholics comprised a hefty slice of the cinema-going public. Besides this, it
was thought the rating would have wider influence.
Once the CLD’s precise objections
were ascertained, Kazan
was ordered to make strategic cuts. These included footage making explicit both
Blanche’s sexual attraction to the Young Man and the sexual bond between the Kowalskis. Warner Brothers asked the CLD to review the film
again after these cuts had been made, and the film avoided a C rating. Later,
those cuts were reinstated. If you have seen Kazan’s movie, it is almost certainly the
uncut version. The matter, therefore, is now of historical interest only,
revealing certain contemporary responses to Tennessee Williams’ theme.
Apparently, the depiction of desire as an amoral force was disturbing not only
when presented in a single woman’s attraction to a younger man, but even
between a married couple.
The other source of pressure, whose imprints remain, came to
bear as the movie was being shot. The film encountered resistance from the
Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and its code of practice. The
producers were advised to make changes to two areas: Allan’s homosexuality and
the rape. In the first instance, concessions were prompt, and all traces of the
topic were obscured. The wording ‘effeminate’ and ‘not like a man’, was
replaced with ‘uncertainty’ and ‘couldn’t hold down a job’. Blanche’s discovery
of Allan with another man was omitted , and her final
words on the dance floor were no longer about her disgust, instead she said:
‘You’re weak. I’ve lost respect for you: I despise you.’ Likewise, Stella’s
description of Blanche’s marriage in scene 7 was deleted, along with the word
‘degenerate’. This explains why the CLD, which had objected to the play’s heterosexual
list, did not worry about the homosexuality; the subject simply wasn’t there by
the time the CLD viewed the film. Had it been, the CLD would, without doubt,
have objected as strongly as The MPAA. Censorship in the USA has its
roots in religion – Puritan and Catholic.
A moral play?
On the second matter, Williams was adamant. He refused to
remove the rape: ‘Streetcar is an extremely and peculiarly moral play, in the
truest and deepest sense of the word. The rape of Blanche by Stanley is a
pivotal, integral truth in the play without which the play loses its meaning,
which is the ravishment of the tender, the sensitive, the delicate, by the
savage and brutal forces of modern society.’
A compromise was struck. The scene was cinematically
softened, but symbolism tries to make it clear what happen behind the gauzy
curtains – through the phallic connotations of the street being hosed down.
More crucial to the MPAA, in any case, was the deletion of words suggesting
Stanley’s action is deliberated and chosen, such as: ‘Come to think of it –
maybe you wouldn’t be too bad to – interfere with.’ Kazan was at a loss to know how this made the
rape les disturbing. The film does blunt what the MPAA presumably found
objectionable: William’s suggestion that Stanley’s
rape is callous opportunism. Presumably the hope was to make it look spontaneous,
fuelled by drink and anger. However, if anything, the cuts risk making it look premeditated, especially as Brando’s performance
captures a degree of calculating menace.
These changes to scene 1- were no the only, nor chief, price
demanded by the MPAA for accepting a rape scene. The overriding condition was
that Stanley must be punished. So, in Kazan’s film, as Stanley
hollers to Stella from within the Kowalski flat, she decides to take the baby
upstairs, vowing ‘I’m not going back in again. Not this time. I’m never going
back in there.’ The closing moments focus on Stella, alone, defiant, protecting
her child from being reared with a rapist. A moral viewpoint was thus created
within the drama, from which Stanley
is judged and condemned. Only thus did the MPAA find the inclusion of a rape
justified: an immoral action could be shown, provided it furthered the message
that evil will be punished.
Interfering
While Williams’ editing for screen reveals what the
guardians of public morality thought was indecent or immoral, closer scrutiny
reveals more. Unpicked, the changes throw the text’s meanings in to sharper
relief. For example, let us look at Mitch’s second moment of friction with Stanley in Scene 11. (The
first is ‘You … you … brag … bull .. bull’, as Stanley cockily sweeps up
the poker takings. This comes as Mitch moves towards the bedroom, where Blanche
has retreated in panic. In the play, Mitch accuses Stanley: ‘You! You done this, all o’ your God
damned interfering with things you –‘. ‘Interfering.’ has a resonance for the
theatre audience. It reminds us of Stanley’s
decision to ‘interfere’ with Blanche in Scene 11 and his role in her insanity.
Mitch cannot, of course, intentionally allude to Stanley’s earlier words (he wasn’t there) , so his remark produces a touch of dramatic irony – he
says more than he knows. ‘Interfering’ is not an echo the film could capitalize
on, because it had already had to cut Stanley’s
line about Blanche being worth interfering with from the rape scene. Instead,
the accusation becomes much less ambiguous: ‘You did
this to her. He did this to her.’
This change gives a misleading impression that Mitch is
conscious of Stanley’s
rape. In fact, he cannot know anything about it. Stella’s discussion with
Eunice early in the scene makes that clear. She listened to Blanche’s ‘story’,
talked it over with Eunice, then decided to have Blanche committed: her
decision, though she is still agonizing over it. Nowhere in scene 11 can we
find any suggestion that Blanche’s story has become more widely known.
Altered Intentions?
The film not only imputes more insight to Mitch than he can
have, but encourages us to focus on his actions as appropriate moral
indignation. The screenplay shows Mitch leaping up to attack Stanley. He delivers a decisive blow as he
shouts ‘You did this to her’. Yet this seems to alter
Williams’ original intentions. There is no sign in the text that he meant to
give Mitch any moral high ground. Mitch gets up to go to Blanche distraught in
the bedroom, not to fight. Stanley
blocks him and pushes him aside dismissively with ‘Quit the blubber’, whereupon
Mitch lunges and ‘strikes at’ him in frustration. These stage directions carry
the meaning: Stanley
blocks Mitch’s route Blanche, literally, as he does psychologically. And this
is what Mitch means by ‘interfering’.
In the ‘some weeks’ between scenes 10 and 11, Blanche has
retreated into a private world and the territory of bathroom and bedroom,
startled even by the sound of the men’s voices. It’s impossible to imagine
there has been any further contact between Mitch and Blanche since the moment
he fled the Kowalski flat as she screamed ‘Fire’. In that scene he cast her as
a prostitute, simultaneously fumbling at her and calling her ‘not clean enough
to bring in the house with my mother’. Surely, then, Mitch attributes Blanche’s
mental imbalance to his own drunken behaviour. His anger at Stanley is displaced anger at himself, and
his accusations are an evasion of responsibility.
The ‘things’ Stanley has interfered with are Mitch and
Blanche’s relationship, but, above all, the inside of Mitch’s head. The play has been described as a
battle between two versions of reality – Stanley and Blanche’s. Both characters
try to impose their ideas about life, and particularly about each other, on
Stella and Mitch, who are pawns in their hostilities. By the close of the play,
Stanley has
‘captured’ both Stella and Mitch in entirely different ways, Mitch’s anger
comes from his guilt and shame. He has been used in Stanley’s endgame, and Blanche is the
sacrifice.
Losing control
It is also worth looking at the films changes to the moments
following Mitch’s accusation. In the text Stanley
responds scornfully: ‘Quit the blubber’ is followed by ‘Hold this bonehead
cry-baby’. Clearly the play reveals not just Stanley’s lack of remorse, but his contempt
for Mitch’s. Nor has he lost his authority over the other men. Steve and Pablo
oblige when told to hold Mitch back. Williams’ dialogue, then moves to the
Matron in the bedroom. In the film, the lines containing ‘blubber’ and
‘cry-baby’ are cut, and replaced by ‘You must be nuts’
(which counters Mitch’s accusation rather than mocking his feelings). Steven
and Pablo are not instructed to restrain Mitch, but do so spontaneously.
Brando’s Stanley therefore appears less cocky, less in control, and more
isolated, especially since Steven and Pablo stand staring at Stanley, pondering
the meaning of Mitch’s ‘He did it’. There follows a line no poker player of Stanley’s caliber would
ever let slip: ‘What are you looking at? I never once touched her.’
Already, the film is preparing viewers for its changed
ending. In doing so it parts company with the play’s disturbing proposition:
that Stanley
can do what he has done and get off scot free – free
from guilt, from suspicion, from punishment. To quote Francis Gilbert: ‘The
play shows that ordinary, handsome, family men like Stanley can be rapists and
that, while their behaviour is sickening, too often they get away with it.’
Changed ending
Kazan’s ending shows us the false comfort
of Stanley not
getting away with it. It is punishment indeed for Stanley, whose chief motivation has been
protection of his territory and determination to hold on to his marriage. But
this obscures what is perhaps Williams’ most unsettling insight of all: the
revered institution of matrimony continues, regardless of evasions, buried
secrets and self-deceit. For Stella makes it clear why she has chose not to
believe Blanche: ‘I couldn’t believe her story and go on living with Stanley.’
Blanche’s ‘story’ is not weighed against Stella’s faith in Stanley, but against the
costs of believing it. In the film she picks up her baby, but in the text
Eunice ‘places the child in her arms’, indicating Stella’s future is already
‘mapped out for her’, just as Blanche’s is. If we try to see Stella simply as
miserably trapped, Stanley’s
fingers finding the opening of her blouse remind us this is a play where
‘things that happen in the dark between a man and a woman … sort of make
everything else seem – unimportant.’
Williams’ final line ‘The game is seven card stud’ is cut
from the film, which focuses on Stella’s vital moment of decision. This means
that we miss the sense of life already resuming, and Williams’ tragic, yet
brutal, view of Blanche as a casualty, moved aside like a run-over cat so that
the streetcars can continue. For Mitch and Stella, who seek to evade self-scrutiny,
such an unflinching gaze at human survival strategies is too difficult. It
seems the same went for the movie industry of the time.
Taken from an article
by Jackie Shead in The
English Review, February 2005