Stellllaaaaa!

We've all said it, even when we didn't know where the reference came from. At some point in our life, all of us have put both of our hands up to our head, leaned back in drunkenly dramatic agony and hollered, "Stelllllaaaa!!"

It's the 1951 film adaptation of Tennessee William's A Streetcar Named Desire, and poor Stanley's lost his woman again. It's the typical girl meets loser boy from the hood, boy marries girl, moves girl to the hood, girl's crazy sister comes to live with them, boy rapes sister, girl vows to leave him story. But as with so many of these fascinating movies of the bygone age, the story does more than to simply play out a tragic scenario in front of the camera. It instead reveals something to the audience, something about themselves.

On the surface, Vivian Leigh's Blanche DuBois is the sympathetic character, the feeble sister who we know from listening between the lines has suffered a great deal back home at Belle Reve. We know there's been some scandal at the high school where she  taught English. Parents are angry, she's been driven out of town, and a "boy" is dead. She is twitchy, insecure, obnoxious, and utterly broken.

Then there's Stanley Kowalski, a 27 year-old Brando who's most significantly positive trait is the ability to make a sweat-soaked t-shirt sexy. We know he's had a rough start too, overly sensitive about his Polish origins and a little too eager to throw around his feeble intelligence of the Napoleonic code, perhaps the only bit of trivia he knows. He's too rough, too loud, just as insecure as Blanche, and disgustingly cruel.

Yet the smallest part in the movie is also one of the more complex and realistically heartbreaking. Stella, played on screen by Kim Hunter, provides a startling and upsetting insight into a uniquely female condition. The first time we are introduced to her character, she's in a bowling alley, watching her husband play. When Blanche arrives, Stanley has started a hootenanny of a brawl with some of the other men, and chairs and salty language are both flying. When Blanche asks Stella which one is Stanley, Stella visibly blushes proudly, points and says, "There he is, over there. The one causing all the raucous."

 As his character develops, Stella's deepens further. There is absolutely nothing to see in this guy, and yet there she is, sniveling after him, even when his aggression almost causes her to lose a baby.

This is the character we mourn for. The quiet, mousy, ex-debutante who has become so hypnotized by Bad-Boy Attraction that she's even willing to sacrifice her sister's sanity.

Isn't this the kind of stuff the movies teach us? It's so subtle that we could almost miss it. Blanche getting hauled away to the Funny Farm is probably the best thing that could have happened to her. But Stella is a willing prisoner here with Stanley, and it's pitifully obvious that no matter how many times she resolutely runs upstairs to spend the night with the neighbors, she's only one "Stella!" away from being lured back in. Sometimes movies are entertainment, sometimes lessons, sometimes warnings, and sometimes all three.
 Streetcar is a triple threat.