A Streetcar Named Desire

1951 PG 2h 5m DVD

A Streetcar Named Desire

1951 PG 2h 5m DVD
  • Overview
  • Details
After losing the family plantation to creditors, aging Southern belle Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh) travels to New Orleans seeking solace in her sister, Stella (Kim Hunter). Instead, she goes toe-to-toe with Stella's brute of a husband, Stanley (Marlon Brando). Leigh, Hunter and Karl Malden all took home Oscars for their work in this sizzling adaptation of Tennessee Williams's classic rumination on carnal attraction and faded gentility.
Cast
Marlon Brando, Vivien Leigh, Kim Hunter, Karl Malden, Rudy Bond, Nick Dennis, Peg Hillias
Director
Elia Kazan
Format
DVD
Screen
Full Screen 1.33:1
Subtitles
French, English, Spanish (Neutral)
CC
Yes
Audio
English: Dolby Digital Mono
Rating
PG - Some material may not be suitable for children. Parents urged to give parental guidance. May contain some material parents might not like for their young children.
age 14+
Common Sense rating OK for kids 14+
age 14+

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.

  • Age appropriate
  • Not an issue
  • Depends on your child and your family
  • Parents strongly cautioned
  • Not appropriate for kids of the age

This information for parents is provided by Common Sense Media, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving kids' media lives.

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