A Streetcar Named Desire, directed in 1951 by Elia Kazan and based on Tennessee Williams’ 1947 play, is probably my most favorite movie of all time, if not it is in the top three. I love the brutal realism that the play and movie bring to life. But I am also a sucker for happy endings, I guess that must be the hopeless romantic in me. So I have decided to out a new spin on things. I would not call it a new ending, just a continuation of the events that ended in the movie (not play, in which the ending is different).
After running up the stairs with the baby in her arms, Stella (Kim Hunter) decides to stay away from Stanley (Marlon Brando). For several weeks Stanley sees nothing of Stella or the child, and it drives him mad. He cannot stand it. So he decides to change his ways and become a better person. He admits to all wrong doing, but it turns out what everyone had thought was a rape was truly just a fight between him and Blanche (Vivien Leigh). Had Blanche just falsely charged Stanley with rape because she had been delusional and/or desirous of revenge?
When Stella learns of what Stanley is trying to do, she slowly starts to come back into his live. They first go on a few dates, and their passionate desire between the two is stronger then ever. They decide to reconcile their differences and choose to move to a different city to start over.
The week the Kowalski’s move to Chicago, Blanche leaves the mental institution which she had been in for almost six months. There to greet her was a solemn Mitch (Karl Malden). Having just lost his mother, Mitch was there without a soul in the world. He tells the new Blanche that he is a changed man and feels deeply sorry for not having been able to accept the woman that she had been back then. She begins to cry as Mitch stumbles down to one knee and holds up a ring. “It was my mother’s,” he says. The scene fades out as she kneels down to Mitch’s level and takes the ring.
I know this is completely unrealistic and ruins the intensity that the movie brought, but it does mix things up a bit. I always will wonder what happened to the lives of those four people. But I guess we now have one version.