Common Sense Note

Parents need to know that there is no healthy male-female dynamic anywhere you look in this once-scandalous drama. Husbands drink, smoke, fight, and beat their wives as a regular occurrance. Though nothing explicit is shown, the viewer understands that sex (and rape) have occurred offscreen. Prostitution, suicide by gun, and student-teacher sexual relations come up in dialogue (often in innuendo-heavy terms). There are a couple old-fashioned racial epithets.

Sexual Content

Stella is naked under bedsheets in one scene; it's pretty obvious she and Stanley have had sex. Lots of euphemistic innuendo in the dialogue, with references to prostitution and even a scandal of a teacher romantically involved with a teen student.

Violence

Volatile, drunken Stanley initiates a brawl and beats on his wife at a card game. We hear more than see other examples of neighborhood domestic violence and household brutality. The suggestion of offscreen rape.

Language

A few ethnic slurs: "Polack" and "Chinaman."

Social Behavior

Though in the end, a woman leaves her abusive husband, the length of the movie details her submissiveness as well as the helplessness of her sister, whose negative experiences with men seem to have propelled her toward alcoholism and a detachment from reality.

Consumerism

Not applicable

Drugs / Tobacco / Alcohol

Heavy drinking and smoking by all, especially alcoholic Blanche. A cigarette case is especially romanticized.