Rating: 
Summary: The greatest film ever
Review: Brando, Hunter, Leigh, and Malden make for the best cinematic piece of film in history.
Rating:
Summary: Steamy, Sultry, and Spectacular
Review: Brando and Leigh's performances are extraordinary. Tennessee Williams was a genius! A must see!!!
Rating: 
Summary: great acting in a breakthrough film
Review: Brando at his best: A Streetcar Named Desire may very well contain the greatest acting performance of all time. Otherwise, strong performances all around with Oscars for Leigh, Malden, and Hunter. Imaginative plot is another key asset. Strong direction is also a key in this masterpiece
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Summary: BRANDO STEALS THE FILM
Review: Brando delivers an incredible performance as Stanley Kowalski. By far, one of his best performances. In Williams's original play, Blanche was to be the main center of attention, but when Brando hits the screen, it's his film from then on. His skill of acting is unmatched to this day.
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Summary: Captures the beautiful simplicity of the play
Review: The utter effulgence of Brando's portrayal of the brash, uncouth Stanley was somehow overlooked by the critics. His natural charisma and sexual magnetism is overwhelming. Other than this oversight, the film was richly rewarded with many well deserved Oscars including Best Picture and a Best Actress award for Vivian Leigh's wrenching and pleasingly theatric submission as Blanche. The primative environs of New Orleans set the foreboding mood of the story well.
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Summary: LEIGH AND BRANDO TOGETHER
Review: The casting of Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando in Tennesee Williams`A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE remains one of the most legendary pairings in cinema history. The cast and crew made this film a haunting classic never to be missed.
Rating:
Summary: Paper Moon.
Review: As a playwright, Tennessee Williams was to the South what William Faulkner was as a fiction writer: a creative genius who revolutionized not only the region's arts scene and literature but that of 20th century America as a whole, bringing a Southern voice to the forefront while addressing universally important themes, and influencing and inspiring generations of later writers.Pulitzer-Prize-winning "A Streetcar Named Desire" dates from the peak of Williams's creativity, the period between 1944 ("A Glass Menagerie") and 1955 ("Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," his second Pulitzer-winner). After its successful 1947 run on Broadway, "Streetcar" was adapted into a screenplay by Williams himself for this movie produced and directed by Elia Kazan, starring the entire Broadway cast except Jessica Tandy, who was replaced by the star of the play's London production, Vivien Leigh. The piece takes its title from one of the New Orleans streetcar lines that protagonist Blanche DuBois (Leigh) rides on her way to the apartment of her sister Stella (Kim Hunter), foreshadowing her later path, from (ever-unfulfilled) Desire to Cemetery (death, or the loss of reality) and a street called Elysian Fields, like the ancient mythological land of the dead. Although Blanche is the person most visibly engaging in deception (of herself and others), almost everyone of the characters suffers loss after a brutal reality check: Stella, who hasn't been back home for years, first learns from Blanche that their genteel home Belle Reve (literally: "beautiful dream") is "lost" - although in what manner precisely Blanche doesn't specify, which immediately raises the suspicion of Stella's husband Stanley (Marlon Brando) - only to later hear from Stanley that under the veneer of Blanche's appearance as a delicate Southern lady lies a promiscuous past, and the true circumstances of her ouster from her job and ultimately from their home town were not as Blanche would have Stella believe. Stanley's friend Mitch (Karl Malden), who despite their disparate social backgrounds intends to marry Blanche after they are drawn to each other by their mutual need for "somebody" in their life, is similarly disillusioned by Stanley, and subsequently by Blanche herself when he insists on seeing her in bright light instead of the dim light of dancehalls and of the paper lamp she has insisted on hanging over Stella and Stanley's living room lamp, neither able to face the effects of age and a profligate lifestyle herself nor willing to reveal them to others. And Blanche's own loss of innocence, finally, set in years earlier, when she found her young husband in bed with another man and he committed suicide after she publicly reproached him. "Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos. That is the way we all see each other in life," Tennessee Williams says about "A Streetcar Named Desire" in Kazan's 1988 autobiography "A Life;" and in a letter opposing the movie's censoring before its release he described the story as being about "ravishment of the tender, the sensitive, the delicate, by the savage and brutal forces of modern society." The brute, of course, is Stanley, who not only becomes the catalyst of Blanche's fate and the destroyer of Stella's, Mitch's and Blanche's own illusions, but is her antagonist in everything from background to personality: Where she is a fading belle dreaming of days gone by he is all youthful virility, a working-class man living in the here and now; where she is refined he is crude, and where she engages in pretense, he tears down the facade behind which she is hiding. The conversation during which Stanley tells Stella about Blanche's past is pointedly set against Blanche's humming the Arlen/Harburg tune "It's Only a Paper Moon," which sees love transforming life into a fantasy world, which in turn however "wouldn't be make-believe if you believed in me." Yet, as portrayed by Marlon Brando, who with this movie stormed into public awareness with his unique and volcanic approach to acting, Stanley is no mere vulgar beast but a complex, often controversial character, despite his brutal streak almost childishly dependant on his wife and frequently hiding his own insecurities under his raw appearance (thus putting up a certain front as well, but unlike Blanche's, a socially acceptable, even common one). Ever the method actor, Brando reportedly stayed in character even during filming breaks; much to the disgust of Vivien Leigh, for whom lines like "[h]e's like an animal. ... Thousands of years have passed him right by and there he is: Stanley Kowalski, survivor of the stone-age, bearing the raw meat home from the kill in the jungle" must consequently have come from the bottom of her heart. In early 1950s' society, "Streetcar" was considered way too risque - even downright sordid - to be presented to moviegoing audiences without severe censorship, which Williams and Kazan were only partly able to fight. One of the most substantial changes made in the adaptation was that at the end of the movie Stanley is punished for his brutality towards Blanche, whereas in the play's cynical original ending he is the only character experiencing no loss at all; indeed seeing his world restored after Blanche's exit. Since Kazan's suggestion to produce two alternate versions (one to please the censors, one in conformity with Williams's play) was rejected, even the 1993 "Original Director's Version" retains its altered, censorship-induced ending. Therefore, the play will forever constitute the last word on Williams's intentions. But even in its censored version this movie was a deserved quadruple Oscar- and multiple other award-winner (albeit undeservedly not for Brando). It has long-since become a true classic: a cinematic gem of first-rate direction and superlative performances throughout. And so it was I entered the broken world
To trace the visionary company of love, its voice
An instant in the wind (I know not whither hurled)
But not for long to hold each desperate choice. Hart Crane, "The Broken Tower": Preface to the published version of Tennessee Williams's play.
Rating:
Summary: some of the best the screen has ever seen
Review: Vivien Leigh, well-known for her portrayal of Scarlett O'Hara in 1939's "Gone With the Wind", plays Blanche, a Southern belle as fragile as Scarlett is strong. In a way, Blanche is what Scarlett would have become if she had watched her mother die. "Death is very pretty compared to dying," she tells her sister Stella, who only came home for the funeral. Stella is pregnant and married to Stanley (the inimitable Brando) who both abhors and is fascinated by his sister-in-law Blanche (and not just in a platonic manner.) Blanche in turn is interested in meeting new gentleman callers, as her great love once killed himself (as she tells us in one of the most riveting scenes in movie history.) Interesting note: the delivery boy she flirts with is Mickey Kuhn, who once played Leigh's nephew Beau in GWTW. Blanche is so fragile that she has no choice but to break. Unfortunately, others hurry her down that path. Perhaps the worst thing one can do, it seems, is depend on the kindness of strangers.
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Summary: Emotionally charged production contains powerful message
Review: "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1951) is one of the few masterpieces of American cinema - a true work of art. The story unfolds in New Orleans where former teacher of english, Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh) comes to live with her sister, Stella (Kim Hunter) and brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski (Marlon Brando) in their small, run down apartment in a poor section of town. When Blanche and Stanley meet for the first time, the sparks begin to fly almost immediately, setting the tone for the entire film. Blanche's intentions to leave behind her unsavory past and begin anew (having been run out of her town of Oriole) are at odds with her brother-in-law's determination (intensified by his suspicion that Blanche has duped Stella out of an inheritance) to expose her social airs and genteel manner as a cover for a life of depravity and immorality. The conflict between the two characters builds to a shocking and pathos-filled climax resulting in the disintegration of the last fragile thread of Blanche's sanity. The film's star, Vivien Leigh, gives the greatest screen performance of her life, moving the viewer to feel her character's despair and regret, particularly when confessing to her newly acquired beau, Mitch (Karl Malden), one of Stanley's buddies, the reason behind her husband's suicide when they were both teenagers. Marlon Brando is unforgettable as brutish, antagonistic, slur-speeched Stanley. His presentation of beer & sweat stained, animal-like masculinity is quite sensational even today, 50 years later. Kim Hunter is equally as brilliant in her role of expectant mother, Stella Kowalski. Her valiant attempts to keep peace between her husband and sister prove futile and eventually she, too, is dragged down into a quagmire of disillusion and resentment. The film contains several messages, but perhaps the most striking sentiment is that a careless, unkind word spoken can cause irreparable damage and lead to tragic consequences, ruining many lives in the process. Add these four players' performances to the excellent Tennessee Williams' story, Elia Kazan's great direction and Alex North's outstanding score - what you get is a genuine first rate classic!
Rating: 
Summary: My rating is for the DVD...not the film.
Review: I won't go into how amazing this movie is. We all know that. What gets me is how little respect Warner Bros. pays to the classic films that built their studios. Here you have one of the best films of all time and they release it on a DVD with virtually no extras and a VERY sub-par transfer. From the moment the Warner Bros. logo pops up you can see how unstable the image is...not to mention a large amount of dirt and debris running through every scene. The sound quality isn't much better (I actually had to turn the subtitles on for some of the pivotal scenes).Isn't this film worthy of a restoration? I've run across this same problem a lot with this company's releases. I guess they know that people will buy these wonderful movies based on the reviews of the movies themselves and don't feel any need to fork out cash to ensure the quality of their products.
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