Vivien Leigh, A Streetcar Named Desire

Won: Academy Award - Best Actress | New York Film Critics Circle - Best Actress | Venice Film Festival - Volpi Cup, Best Actress

Many actresses have that one powerhouse performance which goes on to define their filmographies. Some produce multiple, truly great performances. Where Vivien Leigh's legacy stands out is through two pieces of performance art which are not only "great," but widely considered as monumental, iconic acting achievements that belong in the upper echelon of Oscar's Best Actress category. No other actress holds this distinction.

With that being said, there's a question I've grappled with: is Leigh the definitive Blanche DuBois?


I ask this because, while watching one of the documentaries on the Streetcar DVD, you'll find Karl Malden discussing how co-star Marlon Brando preferred Vivien Leigh's interpretation of the tragic character, while he and Elia Kazan believed Jessica Tandy's Broadway rendition to be the superior, de facto Blanche. Looking into it a bit more, you'll find NPR describing Tandy's performance as "iconic," while Streetcar's original New York Times stage review exclaimed, "This must be one of the most perfect marriages of acting and playwriting...For it does seem almost incredibly that [Tandy] can convey it with so many shades and impulses that are accurate, revealing and true."

It is interesting then that a performance as revered as Leigh's Blanche DuBois may not be as definitively hers as, say, Meryl Streep's Sophie Zawistowska or Leigh's own Scarlett O'Hara. I myself will always wonder how an interpretation of Blanche by the likes of Cate Blanchett or Gillian Anderson may compete with Leigh's. But another line from Brooks Atkinson's review states: 

"Miss Tandy acts a magnificent part magnificently."

This is fundamentally true about Blanche DuBois: she is simply a fantastic character. Blanche is a character so sumptuous and so ripe with drama, a reward in and of herself for the actress who elects to play her. With all due respect to Leigh, I imagine that any other capable actress to have tackled the first Blanche DuBois on celluloid would have received a certain threshold of great praise.

With that being said, I'll borrow from Atkinson: Leigh plays Blanche magnificently. And while I'll  never be able to experience Tandy's rendition of the part (aside from the radio performance available on YouTube, which disappoints, if you ask me), I believe Leigh's differentiator is her visceral fragility; one might attribute this quality to Leigh's acting prowess or her own mental health struggles, but in my opinion, the fragility she brings to the screen is unlike any other Blanche I've watched. Through Leigh, you're witness to a woman who is beautifully and vividly haunted by her demons and by her own toxic sense of self.

Said fragility is on display from the moment Leigh appears in the film until the very end, and it is  exhausting to see someone straddle such a delicate balance for so long a runtime. What's more, Leigh's scenes are masterful in the way she veers - often drastically and within mere seconds - through the many different shades of the character. Take Leigh's very first few scenes with Kim Hunter; she seamlessly weaves together a polite, faux-confident front with waves of insecurity, anxiety, all bubbling up into a brief spasm of rage - this would only be the first sampling of what was to come, and that Leigh powers through the movie on such a crazed spectrum of emotions is demonstrative of an acting endurance test that I'm not sure I've ever witnessed before.

What is beautiful about Leigh's acting here is the melodic cadence in the way she delivers her lines - she has a commanding control over Tennessee Williams' words...Jessica Lange and Ann-Margret are amateurs in comparison. My first thought was that Leigh delivers these lines with a floral innocence as though it were some sort of poetic opera - violent spasms in Blanche's psyche are captured through every syllable from scene to scene are captured by Leigh. I'm of the belief that Leigh's power lies in her delivery. For such a petite, frail looking woman, she can roar such that it sears into the mind. Two moments which are thoroughly etched into my recollection of this film, that I think back to most often, are when she abruptly barks, "I said I was sorry," and then, several scenes later, "deliberate cruelty is not forgivable." These are two moments in which you can tell that Leigh is connected to Blanche in a transcendent way - either by expert understanding of the character or by tapping into a dark side of herself.

This is a harrowing performance, an Olympic-sized showcase only meant for actresses with the most stamina. It was only just that the actress to have successfully carried the weight of Gone with the Wind would be given this part, too.

Both films are wild marathons in their own unique way, both are roles which are similar in that they require gesticulation and artifice. But where Scarlett O'Hara was assured and steadfast in the face of great melodrama for nearly four hours, Blanche serves concentrated insecurity, delusion and turmoil within half the time. You know the former is plucky enough to make it out somehow; you know the writing is on the wall for the latter. It is jarring then to witness such a cocktail of fragility from Leigh juxtaposed against a roller coaster of impending doom. I still have trouble watching the very last scene in the film - it is a horribly tiring, exhausting viewing experience, and that's all due to Leigh.

So in retrospect: regardless of whether Leigh is truly the definitive Blanche DuBois, I've come to the conclusion that she was simply the only choice to bring Blanche to the big screen. For without Gone with the Wind, Leigh most likely would not've become the star that she did, and her star was ultimately what gave her the role over Tandy. They are essentially antithesis studies of the same character; Blanche is Scarlett if Scarlett lost the her uncanny ability to endure and persist through her troubles. It doesn't matter if Tandy might've been a better Blanche on stage, it doesn't matter if Malden or Kazan thinks so - Leigh takes an excellent part and executes it flawlessly, and it became the stuff of legend.