A Streetcar Named Desire

After losing the family farm and being run out of town, a fragile, delusional, aging ex-schoolteacher (Vivien Leigh) moves in her pregnant sister’s (Kim Hunter) noisy and humid French Quarter flat and finds herself being bullied, abused, and driven to madness by her crude and brutish brother-in-law (Marlon Brando). Elia Kazan’s screen treatment of Tennessee Williams’ monumental play is stagy and claustrophobic, while showing its age a bit, but still daring and potent with Brando’s revolutionizing and sometimes hammed up performance standing atop a phenomenal cast which also includes the noble and dopey Maldin.

*** ½ out of ****

Gentleman's Agreement

A California journalist (Gregory Peck) heads to New York to write for a liberal digest and labors over how to approach his new assignment in exposing anti-Semitism in many variants in society until it hits him: attack it like every one of his acclaimed exposés, by getting down to the ground level, and feign being Jewish himself. Age shows on this Elia Kazan Best Picture Oscar winner and it grows tiresome and overly preachy with a bland Peck at his most rigid. The screenplay however is utterly thorough and explores its subject through many angles and lenses.

** 1/2 out of ****