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A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

tomatometer

98

Average Rating: 8.5/10
Reviews Counted: 47
Fresh: 46 | Rotten: 1

No consensus yet.

100

Average Rating: 8.5/10
Critic Reviews: 5
Fresh: 5 | Rotten: 0

No consensus yet.

audience

88

liked it
Average Rating: 3.9/5
User Ratings: 50,270

My Rating

Movie Info

In the classic play by Tennessee Williams, brought to the screen by Elia Kazan, faded Southern belle Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh) comes to visit her pregnant sister, Stella (Kim Hunter), in a seedy section of New Orleans. Stella's boorish husband, Stanley Kowalski (Marlon Brando), not only regards Blanche's aristocratic affectations as a royal pain but also thinks she's holding out on inheritance money that rightfully belongs to Stella. On the fringes of sanity, Blanche is trying to forget her

PG, 2 hr. 2 min.

Drama, Classics

Tennessee Williams, Oscar Saul

May 18, 1999

Warner Bros. Pictures

Cast

All Critics (48) | Top Critics (6) | Fresh (48) | Rotten (1) | DVD (9)

...if the hothouse style was ever justified, this is the occasion.

June 28, 2007 Full Review Source: Chicago Reader | Comment
Chicago Reader
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Inner torments are seldom projected with such sensitivity and clarity on the screen.

May 20, 2003 Full Review Source: New York Times | Comment
New York Times
Top Critic IconTop Critic

The camera has done greater justice to the Williams play, catching the nuances and reflected tragedy with an intimacy that is so vital in a story of this type.

February 13, 2001 Full Review Source: Variety | Comment
Variety
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Brando's performance as Stanley is one of those rare screen legends that are all they're cracked up to be.

January 1, 2000 Full Review Source: Washington Post | Comment
Washington Post
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Despite the overwhelming power of Brando's performance, Streetcar is one of the great ensemble pieces in the movies.

January 1, 2000 Full Review Source: Chicago Sun-Times | Comment (1)
Chicago Sun-Times
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Starring Brando and Vivien Leigh, Kazan's screen version of Williams' masterpiece is the best film made out of the playwright's theaterical work.

March 15, 2011 Full Review Source: EmanuelLevy.Com | Comment

"Stella!" classic is powerful tale of abuse, alcoholism.

February 17, 2011 Full Review Source: Common Sense Media | Comment
Common Sense Media

Has a permanent place amongst the classics, not only for the performances but for Tennessee Williams' raw writing about people raw with pain, fear, longing and complicated feelings

February 20, 2009 Full Review Source: Urban Cinefile | Comment
Urban Cinefile

Between them Kasan, Brando and Leigh take all the blood, sweat and tears of Williams' text and create one of the most potent productions of the post-war years.

November 14, 2008 Full Review Source: Film4 | Comment

The blistering sexual repression is the entire point of the 1950s. Quite simply, fabulous.

November 14, 2008 Full Review Source: Times [UK] | Comment
Times [UK]

The film is perhaps best regarded as an intelligent and engaged recreation of the original Broadway experience, in which Jessica Tandy first played the role. There's no denying the awful horror and pity of the final scene.

November 14, 2008 Full Review Source: Guardian [UK] | Comment
Guardian [UK]

it's a close-to-definitive example of how to make a great play work on film, for all the very slight air of Hollywood compromise.

November 14, 2008 Full Review Source: Daily Telegraph | Comment
Daily Telegraph

Simply a masterful adap of Tennessee Williams' sultry, searing play and an affirmation of Marlon Brando's acting genius.

November 14, 2008 Full Review Source: Total Film | Comment
Total Film

There's an inevitable staginess to Tennessee Williams' devastating portrait of delusion and cruelty, but director Elia Kazan catches the squalid, claustrophobic atmosphere of a New Orleans tenement just right.

November 14, 2008 Full Review Source: Independent | Comments (9)
Independent

One of the most potent productions of the post-war years.

November 1, 2007 Full Review Source: Film4 | Comment

A Streetcar Named Desire features some of the finest ensemble acting ever offered on the screen, speaking some Williams's most vivid dialogue.

June 28, 2007 Full Review Source: TV Guide's Movie Guide | Comment
TV Guide's Movie Guide

The classic adaptation of the Tennessee Williams play, featuring one of Marlon Brando's legendary performances.

January 27, 2007 Full Review Source: Laramie Movie Scope | Comment
Laramie Movie Scope

That melancholy we feel as it closes is a mourning for me that I'll never be able to see this film again for the first time--and that I'll never be able to appreciate any film that came before it without the stain of it in my perception.

June 15, 2006 Full Review Source: Film Freak Central | Comment
Film Freak Central

Brando pulls off astonishing things as Stanley Kowalski, and Vivien Leigh gives a performance that must have taken everything she had as Blanche DuBois.

May 26, 2006 Full Review Source: Combustible Celluloid | Comment
Combustible Celluloid

Brando's performance is probably the most influential in movie history for the way its raw naturalism smolders amid the stiff theatricality that surrounds him.

May 5, 2006 Full Review Source: Arizona Daily Star | Comment
Arizona Daily Star
More Critic Reviews

Audience Reviews for A Streetcar Named Desire

As I was watching this, I quickly realized that it was basically just a melodramatic soap opera that made me uncomfortable and pissed because the characters are so horrible and pathetic, albeit a meoldramatic soap opera that was artistically executed and filled with excellent performances. I kinda feel bad i enjoyed

June 18, 2006
cosmo313
Chris Weber

Super Reviewer

This Elia Kazan classic offers probably the most gripping performance from a female lead I've ever seen - Vivien Leigh is phenomenal, and Marlon Brando does not disappoint.

February 8, 2011
Kristijonas Fussman

Super Reviewer

    1. Blanche Dubois: Funerals are pretty compared to deaths.
    – Submitted by Chad E (24 days ago)
    1. Stanley Kowalski: Don't you ever talk that way to me. 'Pig,' 'Polack,' 'disgusting,' 'vulgar,' 'greasy' those kind of words have been on your tongue and your sister's tongue just too much around here. What do you think you are, a pair of queens? Now just remember what Huey Long said that every man's a king and I'm the king around here, and don't you forget it.
    – Submitted by Alejandro O (56 days ago)
    1. Blanche Dubois: Sometimes there is a God.
    – Submitted by Jennifer M (3 months ago)
    1. Stanley Kowalski: Stella! Hey, Stella!
    – Submitted by Chris P (9 months ago)
    1. Blanche Dubois: I've always depended on the kindness of strangers.
    – Submitted by Tyler C (10 months ago)

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Foreign Titles

  • A Street Car Named Desire (UK)
  • Un Tramway nommé désir (FR)
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