Personal Response

Kevin Au

Ms. Fournier

ENG 4U-5

February 5^rd 2014

A Streetcar Named Desire Film Adaption Personal Response

            In the film, A Streetcar Named Desire, produced by Kazan in 1951, is well adapted in my opinion. Even though there is a slight difference between the film and the play, but the clip is still effective due to the appropriate use of sound/music and adaption of screenplay.

            From the clip we watched, it started with a train arrived the train station at New Orleans while the music was playing, which the music was Jazz, not the blue piano. This was identical to the play because it started with a music played by Negro entertainers at a barroom of New Orleans. Later on in the clip, the Jazz actually continued playing until the end of the clip instead of playing to the blue piano like what happened in the play. In the play, the music changed instantly from Jazz to the blue piano once the characters started speaking in the scene one. This was a significant difference between the play and the clip because not only it was the first appearance of Kazan’s adaption, but also because the blue piano was such a strong symbol of Blanche. Tennessee Williams wrote, “This ‘blue piano’ expresses the spirit of the life, which goes from here/Above the music of the “blue piano” the voices of people on the street can be heard overlapping” (3).

            In my opinion, Jazz was more appropriate than the blue piano on expressing the energy and spirit of the city of New Orleans because both the music and the city were vivid and energetic. Therefore, it was reasonable that Kazan picked Jazz over the blue piano. 

            Next, there was a notable difference between the screenplay and the stage play. In the clip, after Blanche arrived her sister’s house she then went to the bowling stadium looking for Stella, where they saw Stanley in a fight and soon left to have some drinks (alcohol) in a bar. On the opposite, the play first started with dialogues of Stanley, Stella, Eunice, and Colored Woman, where then Blanche arrived. This was the first adaption of Kazan where he cut out several dialogues that appeared in the stage play from the clip. This adaption made the clip more effective and straight because those dialogues from the stage play were not important at all.

            As for the start up of the film, Kazan replaced the section (dialogues) with Blanche walking on the street of New Orleans. More importantly, later on Blanche was surprised to see her sister’s husband behaving like an animal in a fight at bowling stadium. This adapted section was a lot more meaningful than the start of the stage play for following reasons: Stanley’s involvement in the fight symbolized his animal-like personality and Blanche’s face expression revealed her uncertainty of Stanley. The reason Kazan did this was because he wanted to foreshadow the future of these characters purposely.

            In scene one of the stage play, Blanche and Stanley had just met each other and he had not yet revealed his animal-like personality; however, in the scene one of the film, Kazan’s adaption already did.

                        Blanche. You must be Stanley. I’m Blanche.

                        Stanley.  Stella’s sister?

                        Blanche. Yes.

                        Stanley.  H’lo. Where’s the little woman? (Williams 25)

            In conclusion, I believed Kazan truly made some good adaptions on the uses of music and screenplay so far in the film. In despite of the difference between the film and the play, I still consider it as an effective piece of work.

           

Works Cited

A Streetcar Named Desire. Dir. Elia Kazan. Perf. Vivien Leigh, Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter, and Karl Malden. Warner Brothers, 1951. DVD.

Williams, Tennessee. A Streetcar Named Desire. New York: New Directions, 1947. Print.