A Streetcar Named Desire: Blanche vs. Stanley

I ran into Billie the other day in New York. She looked divine, as always, and she told me you’ve settled in Paris, in some place called Montmartre. With American girls, no less! Darling, tell me why you’d cross the ocean only to end up with your own kind again? I imagined you sipping wine with philosophers, learning to smoke elegantly, and mingling with those mysterious Parisians who say too little and mean too much.

Billie and I caught a double feature at the Thalia* before I left New York, and you won’t believe the first film they played: A Streetcar Named Desire**. I’ve seen it before, of course, but this time, Nina, I truly saw it through your eyes. Your idea about the Old World versus the New has been nagging at me ever since our last talk.

I was so obsessed with the idea that I actually went back to Book Row*** and bought the play. I’ve been reading and re-reading the dialogue late into the night, trying to get to the bottom of the dynamics between Blanche and Stanley. I wanted to understand the 'why' behind their visceral hatred of each other.

You have Blanche, who arrives clinging to the remnants of a class system that once placed her above men like Stanley. Her manners and education were once social currency, but in Stanley's industrial America, labor and earning power decide status.

I can’t help but feel a pang of pity for her, though. She is just so alienated, isn't she? She clings to her refinement like armor, but it’s useless in a place that measures worth with labor and hard facts.

What really troubled me this time was the way she uses Stanley's Polish heritage as a weapon. She calls him a 'Polack' with such casual disdain, as if being a second-generation immigrant makes him a foreigner in his own birthplace. Actually, it’s her way of staying 'superior'... if she can frame him as an outsider, then her version of America remains the only 'true' one.

Stanley, however, views being 100% American as an identity he earned, not inherited. His birthright and war record are proof enough. But the war has followed him home. He handles conflict the way he was trained to: identify the threat and eliminate it. To him, Blanche isn’t merely inconvenient, she is the last relic of a world that makes him feel small. And so he does what he understands best: he tears it down.

They both hold these deep, bitter resentments: Blanche for the 'uncivilized' world that is swallowing her whole, and Stanley for the 'entitled' class that makes him feel unrefined. It’s two different versions of America staring each other down. It’s a brutal collision of values. Neither is 'wrong' in their own mind, but they are so diametrically opposed that they can’t occupy the same space without someone being destroyed.

Now about Brando: I haven't really changed my mind about his portrayal of Stanley. Stanley is a brute, a cruel man, and yet I can't look away from Brando, so I’m enclosing this photograph just so you can look at him and tell me you don’t feel a little bit like a traitor to your own sex.

One last thing before I go.

Reading the play after seeing the film was a revelation: I noticed a significant omission, by the way. In the movie, they describe Blanche’s young husband as merely 'weak' or 'sensitive.' But the play says he was gay, Nina. Did you know that? He was living a life he had to hide, and that secret is what ultimately destroyed both him and Blanche.

It makes me wonder: will we ever live in a world where people can simply be themselves? Where a person’s truth isn't treated like a scandal to be censored? I hope one day we’ll see a cinema that represents everyone fairly, without the fear of backlash.

As for me, I’ve finally unpacked my suitcases here in Hollywood. Can you believe it? I landed a job as a junior stills photographer at Paramount. It’s hardly glamorous yet (mostly long hours and endless coffee) but every now and then I catch a glimpse of someone extraordinary. Elizabeth Taylor! I had to blink five times before I believed my own eyes.

Oh, Nina, I miss you. Write soon, my darling adventurer. Tell me everything about Paris and the cafés, and do tell me: is there some handsome Frenchman who’s caught your eye?

All my love,

P.S. I believe I’ve squeezed every last drop of brain juice onto this letter, and it is entirely your fault. You’re the one who planted these ideas in my head!

(*) The Thalia Theatre: Located on 95th street in the Upper West Side, The Thalia was the beating heart of New York's "revival" cinema scene. In the 1950s, it wasn't just a movie house; it was a temple for intellectuals and bohemians who gathered to watch foreign films and Hollywood classics long after their original release.

(**) A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) was a turning point in cinema, adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway play by Tennessee Williams. The film brought a raw, unpolished "grit" to the "gold" of Hollywood's studio system. By maintaining Williams’ haunting dialogue and tragic atmosphere, the film allowed Marlon Brando’s "Method acting" to redefine the American hero.

(***) Book Row refers to a legendary stretch of Fourth Avenue in Manhattan that was home to nearly thirty secondhand bookstores during the mid-20th century. It was a famous destinations for writers, students, and intellectuals who spent hours hunting for rare finds.

💌 Read Nina's Next letter: The Cost of Beauty - The Engineered Perfection of Monumental Paris

Marlon Brandon photographs are part of Millie's Photo collection: Hollywood. Discover them, along with ten other photographs from the golden age of cinema, here.