"I Have Always Depended On The Kindness Of Strangers." —Vivien Leigh as Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) directed by Elia Kazan, based on Tennessee Williams's play (1947)
According to the Department of Psychology from Georgetown University, in a recent study revised on October 26, 2022, findings suggest that highly altruistic individuals believe that others deserve help regardless of their potential moral shortcomings. Results provide preliminary evidence that lower levels of cynicism motivate costly, non-normative altruism toward strangers. Perceiving strangers at baseline as deserving of help may be an important factor, with perceptions of others’ benevolence versus malevolence being particularly influential in various forms of prosociality (Yamagishi, Cook, & Watabe, 1998). For example, higher levels of generalized interpersonal trust and lower levels of cynicism are associated with more prosocial behavior (Turner & Valentine, 2001). We thus assessed whether altruism toward strangers may be correlated with generally favorable perceptions of others’ benevolence or lack of malevolence using the Belief in Pure Good (BPG) and Belief in Pure Evil (BPE) scales. Beliefs about others’ benevolent versus malevolent goals, intentions, and traits have been linked to self-reported measures of prosociality and antisociality (Webster & Saucier, 2013). We also considered the potential role of religious and spiritual beliefs, and belief in pure good is correlated with religiosity and Christian devoutness (Webster & Saucier, 2013). Little is yet known about the potential role of religious and spiritual beliefs in extraordinary altruism. One study found that 37% of those who have considered altruistic acts cited spiritual beliefs as a motivation (Henderson et al., 2003). But in another investigation, only 17% of individuals who have actually altruistic cited religious reasons––despite more than half of participants having described themselves as religious (Massey et al., 2011). We predicted that altruists would endorse greater belief in human benevolence and less belief in human malevolence. Given the observed relationship between self-reported empathy and belief in pure good (Webster & Saucier, 2013), we also accounted for empathy in our models. Source: www.sciencedirect.com
Ellen Dowling (who performed as Blanche's sister Stella on Broadway) suggested that Elia Kazan should use the ambiguity evident in the play to their advantage, where Blanche and Stanley alternate roles of protagonist and antagonist. John Timpane, a theater and fine arts critic, in June Schlueter’s Feminist Rereadings of Modern America Drama (1989), posits that reading A Streetcar Named Desire from a feminist perspective actually heightens the ambiguity, deconstructing the audience's responses. As John Timpane notes, ambiguity is not necessarily an artistic failure and may even be intentional in this case: “in a way, ambiguity is a hedge against annihilation.”
Jessica Tandy was originally slated to play Blanche DuBois, after creating the role on Broadway. The role was given to Vivien Leigh (after Olivia de Havilland refused it) because she had more box-office appeal. John Garfield had turned down the role of Stanley Kowalski because he didn't want to be overshadowed by the female lead, Vivien Leigh.
Vivien Leigh, who suffered from bipolar disorder in real life, later had difficulties in distinguishing her real life from that of Blanche DuBois. Although Vivien Leigh initially thought Marlon Brando to be crass and affected, and he thought her to be impossibly haughty and prim, both soon became friends and the cast worked together smoothly. Despite giving the definitive portrayal of Stanley Kowalski, Marlon Brando said he privately detested the character. Tennessee Williams's letter to Audrey Wood, mid-June 1947: "Both Kazan and me had John Garfield in mind for the part of Stanley Kowalski. Kazan and Garfield went way back to the 30s, in the days of the Group Theatre. But Garfield balked at the idea of coming back for an open-ended run which would keep him out of Los Angeles indefinitely. So although the trade papers announced that Garfield had signed on to play Stanley (in early August), that was not actually the case. Garfield only wanted to do it for four months, a limited run, and he also wanted to be guaranteed the role should it be made into a film. Irene Selznick turned Garfield down, and so they had to, again, look for another Stanley."
Brando’s feeling that the play was a size too big for him was intensified by the knowledge that John Garfield had been the first choice. He couldn’t get that out of his head, the anxiety that he was second-banana. He would mutter, “They should have gotten John Garfield” in the middle of rehearsals when he was struggling. His insights into the character of Stanley, however, are invaluable. Theatre producer Robert Whitehead said about Brando in the play: "There were no previous models for Brando. His relationship to the poetic reality of Williams was particularly embracing; what Tennessee wrote, in relation to Brando’s sensibility, it all worked." Dakin Williams (Tennessee Williams’ brother): "Blanche is actually Tennessee. If he would tell you something it wouldn’t be necessarily true. As Blanche says in Streetcar, ‘I don’t tell what’s true, I tell what ought to be true.’ And so everything in Blanche was really like Tennessee."
"East of Eden" and "Splendor in the Grass" both deal with America's puritanical streak and the latter film, in particular, addresses excessive capitalism, its recklessness and potential to produce destructive consequences. "A Face in the Crowd" questions the American public's gullibility and its fascination with celebrity, fame and power.
Eva Marie Saint and Marlon Brando in "On The Waterfront" (1954) directed by Elia Kazan. "On the Waterfront" can be read as Kazan's attempt to account for his willingness to comply with HUAC's demands by having his alter ego, Terry Malloy, move from informing to a metaphorical crucifixion and redemption to becoming a hero figure to his peers. Unfortunately, for Kazan, life didn't imitate art. —"Criticism on A Streetcar Named Desire" (2003) by John S. Bak
"In movies, the balance between art and business has always been precarious, with business outweighing art, but the business part was, at least, in the hands of businessmen who loved movies. As popular entertainment, movies need something of what the vulgarian moguls had—zest, a belief in their own instincts, a sentimental dedication to producing pictures that would make their country proud of their contribution, a respect for quality, and the biggest thing: a willingness to take chances. They were part of a different America. The cool managerial sharks don’t have that; neither do the academics. The big change in this country is reflected in the fact that people in the movie business no longer feel it necessary to talk about principles at all. There has always been a megalomaniac potential in moviemaking, and in this period of stupor, when values have been so thoroughly undermined that even the finest directors with the most freedom aren’t sure what they want to do, they often become obsessive and grandiloquent. Perpetually dissatisfied with the footage they’re compulsively piling up, they keep shooting—like mad royalty, adding rooms to the palace. Megalomania and art become the same thing to them. But a lot of people around them are deeply impressed by megalomania.
We don’t know what we’re reacting to anymore, and, beyond that, it’s becoming just about impossible to sort out the con from the truth because a successful con makes its lies come true in this business. Movies are now being pushed in the school system because the number of paid movie admissions per year is about a fourth of what it used to be. Actually, something has gone terribly wrong with movies. I think it can be said that the public no longer goes to them with much expectation of pleasure. Even college students don’t go to many new movies and often they prefer old movies on television (they say they have a better time watching classic movies). Most movies these days are made (seemingly) for nobody; the proportion of movies that fail commercially is at an all-time high, and they often fail mercilessly sometimes on the opening day of a first-run movie a theater does not sell a single ticket—so that investing money in movies is becoming a fantastic long-shot gamble against public apathy. The problem may lie in the attitudes that permeate new films; even when they’re relatively clever and fast-moving, one is likely to come out depressed rather than refreshed, feeling disagreeable or angry.
Is this perhaps because the moviemakers don’t have the respect for the audience essential to the creation of satisfying theatrical experiences? Many of the men who have been quickest to take advantage of the flux since the conglomerate takeovers are those with the cunning to exploit the current low mood of the young movie audience (as in Joe) or with the strong, shallow egos to convince the shaken-up studio heads that they know what the youth market will buy. The rising hacks now making deals have taken over some of the coarsest attitudes of the moguls of yore and have left out one vital ingredient of old picturemaking. It used to be understood that no matter how low your estimate of the public intelligence was, how greedily you courted success, or how much you debased your material in order to popularize it, you nevertheless tried to give the audience something. That was the principal excuse for all the story conferences and the restrictions inflicted on the writers and directors by the producers, and even though this excuse was the basis for crippling some talented writers, their excuse wasn’t totally false. It seems a little silly to have to point this out, but the assumption that a movie was supposed to do something for the audience was a sound one.
The greatest filmmakers—like D.W. Griffith and Jean Renoir—were the men and women who not only wanted to give the audience of their best but had the most to give. This is also, perhaps, the element that, combined with originality and temperament, makes the greatest stars and enables them to last—what links Louis Armstrong and Laurence Olivier and Bette Davis. In the new, fluid movie situation, with some of the obstacles gone, it should be easier for artists to give everything they have; that’s what freedom means in the arts. Working at one’s peak capacity, going beyond one’s known self, giving everything one has, makes show business, from time to time, art. Good hack work could be done under the old system, because even when you worked beneath your full capacity—grinding your teeth in frustration—you could still do an honest job, respectful of the audience’s needs, and some fine American movies were made as plain, honest jobs of hack work. But the American audience outgrew the conventional genre films. The familiar patterns whose unfolding once gave the audience such anticipatory pleasure and such nostalgic satisfaction in the formal closing began instead to turn the new audiences derisive, and so the western heroes became camp figures who grew old (as John Wayne in True Grit) or Freudian-freaky (as in the Burt Kennedy westerns), or escaped to other countries (as in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid).
But substituting the clichés of Madison Avenue militancy for the middle-class banalities is a disaster at every level; in Europe a movie like The Strawberry Statement may be considered politically daring, but we here can recognize it for what it is—the twin of that teenage-magazine pitch for the youth market. The old film romances may have been grandiose, but at least they bound us together by reminding us of our common fantasies. Exploitation “message” movies like The Strawberry Statement, the brash, confident Getting Straight, and the Stanley Kramer's political drama R.P.M. are more offensive. No contemporary American subject provided a better test of the new movie freedom than student unrest. It should have been a great subject: the students becoming idealists and trying to put their feelings about justice into practice; the relationship between boredom and activism; and what Angus Wilson wrote: “Life can't be put on paper in all its complexity.” Instead, we’ve been getting glib “statements” and cheap sex jokes, the zoomy shooting and shock cutting of TV commercials, plus a lot of screaming and ketchup on the lenses.
In an article in the New York Times, Israel Horovitz explained that he didn’t write the screenplay of The Strawberry Statement for radicals. From his ideas (“Isn’t it strange that man could invent wealth but never find a way to spread it around?”), he seems to be a sophistic Andy Hardy. He wrote the movie, he tells us, to radicalize a typical fifteen-year-old girl in his home town. His article could almost be a classic New Left Hollywood parody. How is it that, unlike the writers on the Andy Hardy pictures, who knew they were hacks when they wrote down to the audience, Mr. Horovitz does not know? How is it that Richard Rush and his scriptwriter, Robert Kaufman, do not know that when they reject criticism of Getting Straight by appealing to the court of those “lined up every night in record numbers” they are giving the same old Hollywood answer, and that when they gild it with the information that these queues are composed of “the new generation of moviegoers who have taken film as their own medium, as their personal art form and instrument of communication” they are talking the Hollywood-speak of Louis B. Mayer and Darryl F. Zanuck? Horovitz didn’t appeal to the court of the public, because The Strawberry Statement was a flop, but Rush and Kaufman had a hit, so they claimed that the public knows best.
The avowed aim of most of the new film men is to shatter the complacency of the audience. Michael Sarne, the director of Joanna and Myra Breckinridge, threatens us with more of the same until “some compromise is achieved between the generations and races, classes, and warring factions.” He and the others justify everything in their movies with slick revolutionary catch phrases; they are, they tell us, attacking the bestiality of our time by making brutal movies, attacking the shoddiness of American culture by shoving shoddiness down our throats. Their movies become our punishment, and the worse their movies turn out, the more self-righteously they explain that it was just what we deserved. They’re shaking up Middle America! The press reception at which the announcement was made was Sterling Silliphant’s first in New York since he left the helm of the Twentieth Century-Fox publicity department in 1953. “This time,” he quipped, “I’m on the other side of the fence.” He isn’t; he’s still in the same business, whether he writes publicity or makes movies. Madison Avenue sells attacks on Madison Avenue the same way conglomerate-appointed studio heads grow beards and serve up the terrorist, utopian thinking that they hope will appeal to young ticket buyers.
.jpg)
The movies that are popularly considered the best movies at any given time may or may not be important movies—but they touch a nerve, express a mood that is just coming to a popular consciousness, or present heroes who connect in new ways. They not only reflect what is going on in the country but, sometimes by expressing it and sometimes by distorting it, affect it, too—such movies as The Wild One, Rebel Without a Cause, Blackboard Jungle, On the Waterfront, Morgan!, Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, Midnight Cowboy, and Easy Rider. Movies like these enter the national bloodstream, and, at the moment, the few big movies seem to do so faster than ever before, and more directly—maybe because that “best-educated” generation in history is so nakedly vulnerable to whatever stirs it emotionally. This susceptibility, rather than “visual literacy,” is the distinctive trait of the “film generation”; they go back to re-experience the movies they identify with, re-entering into them with psychodrama. Easy Rider was a mainliner, tapping a vein of glamorous suicidal masochism. At least, Medium Cool and WUSA were honest.
Joe is so slanted to feed the paranoia of youth that at its climax (a reversal of the Sharon Tate case), when the young hippies are massacred by the “straight” adults—the blue-collar bigot Joe and a liberal advertising man—members of the audience respond on cue with cries of “Next time we’ll have guns!” and “We’ll get you first, Joe!” The apprehensiveness that one feels throughout Joe—the sense of violence perpetually about to erupt—makes it effective melodrama but also makes it an anxious, unpleasant experience. I had some doubts about the use of melodramatic techniques on the serious political theme of Costa-Gavras's Z, but the director seemed reasonably responsible; in Joe the manipulation of the audience is so shrewdly, single-mindedly commercial that it’s rather terrifying to sit there and observe how susceptible the young audience is. Since the assassinations, there’s been a general feeling of powerlessness, and what gives Joe some of the validity that the audience reacts to is that so many lies have finally resulted in many young people’s not knowing how to sort things out, not caring, and not believing anything.
No comments :
Post a Comment