Imitating an Icon: John Erman's Remake of Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire

Imitating an Icon: John Erman's Remake of Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire JUNE SCHLUETER When the news broke that John Erman would be directing a television film version ofTennessee Williams's A StreetcarNamedDesire, most ofus thought not of the Williams play but ofElia Kazan's 195I Hollywood film, wondering how Stanley Kowalski and Blanche DuBois would be possible without Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh. The combination of Brando's raw sexuality and Leigh's desperate fragility had become not merely the measure of any subsequent performance but an icon: inevitable, indelible, inimitable. After Brando, who would dare to wail "Stella!" from the bottom of that New Orleans staircase, shriek out a cat cry to frighten Blanche, or "clear off' his place at table? After Leigh, who would dare to pluck up the threads of dignity from the unraveled spool and walk out of Stanley'S house on the gentleman caller's arm, acknowledging, "Whoever you are - I have always depended on the kindness of strangers,,?1 But Treat Williams and Ann-Margret did dare and, under Erman's direction, were gutsy enough to do a remake of the Kazan film. Erman's A StreetcarNamed Desire (1984), in imitating this icon, prescribes its own limitations, yet it still manages to accomplish a distinct if subtle reinterpretation of the Williams play. Those of us who have read Maurice Yacowar's essay on the Kazan film, in Tennessee Williams and Film,2 know the extent to which the censors and the Catholic Legion of Decency influenced Kazan's departures from the Williams text. Under pressure to conform to both Hollywood's official morality and the Catholic Church's, Kazan omitted any references to Blanche's young husband's homosexuality (scene 6). He dramatized Stanley's rape of Blanche only suggestiveIy, through a shot ofthe pair in a broken mirror, completing an action framed by streams of fluids - the first from Stanley's beer bottle, the second from a firehose cleaning the street (scene 10). And he ended the film with Stella (Kim Hunter), who embraces Stanley in Williams's play, shouting at her husband never to touch her again (scene II). 140 JUNE SCHLUETER In Ennan's production, Blanche reveals the sad truth about the boy she married, restoring Williams's tale of discovery. In the rape scene, the camera catches Stanley poised above Blanche, whom he has thrown to the bed, and remains as Stanley's body rises and falls in the regular rhythms ofsex. This film ends not with Stella's (Beverly D'Angelo's) rejection ofthe man who has raped her sister, but with Stanley and Stella locked in a loving embrace, walking past the seven-card-stud players to their bedroom. The obvious changes in the treatment of these three scenes and a shift in emphasis throughout in the portrayals of Blanche and Stanley suggest the extent to which Ennan's effort, despite its dependence upon the screenplay, reinterprets Williams's text. In preparation for her part in the teleplay, an eager Ann-Margret studied both the Williams text and Vivien Leigh's perfonnance as Blanche. In speaking of her experience with the film, she noted that it took her weeks to recover. She would call up Ennan to ask, "Are you well yet?",3 and they would agree they were not. Ann-Margret takes Blanche from a mellow fantasy world into an "altered state" so terrible, so confining and frightening, that all the while she was creating the role she felt as though she was fighting for her life. Ann-Margret's portrayal of Blanche's mental disintegration is remarkably effective, but what distinguishes her interpretation from Leigh's is, finally, the sustained sensuality she brings to the part. Ann-Margret's Blanche is a frankly sexual woman who replaces Leigh's ethereal fragility with an earthy substantiality . This Blanche does not emerge from a cloud of steam at the New Orleans train station, but first appears aboard the streetcar. A conscious seductress, this Blanche is, early on, an even match for Stanley, who, in Treat Williams's rendering, is aware from the start that: "We've had this date with each other from the...