Fusion 45 on Brando and Wanda Jackson
My wife and I watched A Streetcar Named Desire last night.
My wife is a theater professor, the progeny of a playwright, a woman who spent her childhood reading Charles Dickens and Tennessee Williams. I’m the son of an advertising salesman who spent his pre-hormonal years memorizing baseball lineups and record jackets.
We’re an interesting pair when it comes to watching movies. I get involved (I believe they call it “suspending disbelief”) and she analyzes. She thinks Streetcar is brilliant on all fronts. I thought Vivian Leigh overacted…way overacted. I can see why Brando gets imitated so much, though.
STELLA!
Imagine yourself in that sweaty apartment, thunderstorms blowing in, the tinny sound of Wanda Jackson singing on the transistor radio.
I have to agree with you regarding Vivian Leigh’s performance. Her characterisation is so theatrically overblown that any degree of empathy with her plight is quickly smothered.
It is – as you say – impossible to do much else than to sit back and enjoy Brando’s showboating as it drowns out all else.
Nice song.
i think you’re looking at the movie bass ackwards..
as ib says above, it’s Brando who’s showboating….the play is NOT about Stanley…
Brando’s portrayal on Broadway was apparently even more overblown…it was a big problem at the time as it completely subverted the intent of the play..
if anything, i think Leighs performance is an attempt to hold her own in the face of an actor intent on chewing up the scenery…
You’re probably right…Leigh, no doubt, had to pedal hard to keep up with the peloton (to use a cycling expression). I guess I bought Brando’s “chair-again-the-wall” overacting more than I bought Leigh’s “purring-with-the-cigarette” melodrama. I’m ill-qualified to be a movie critic; maybe I am bass ackwards. I do appreciate another point of view, though. Thanks for commenting. Music [Not Movie
] Junkie.