End of the line longing

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Endstation Sehnsucht (originally A Streetcar Named Desire , literally A streetcar called Sehnsucht ) is a drama by Tennessee Williams .

Marlon Brando in 1948 when he played A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway .

This piece, strongly influenced by the teachings of Sigmund Freud , is about the transition from the aristocratic culture of the old southern states to the new America, in which the laws of capitalism rule. This is illustrated by the argument between the vulgar muscle man Stanley Kowalski and the apparently well-bred Blanche DuBois.

For Endstation Sehnsucht , which premiered on December 3, 1947 at the Ethel Barrymore Theater in New York , Tennessee Williams received the Pulitzer Prize in 1948 and the play also won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for "Best Play" in 1948 excellent. The play was both premiered and later filmed with Marlon Brando in the male lead role. It was directed by Elia Kazan , who had already staged the premiere on Broadway . The film premiered on September 19, 1951.

The German-language premiere (in the translation by Berthold Viertel ) took place on November 10, 1949 at the Schauspielhaus Zurich , the German premiere on March 17, 1950 at the Pforzheim City Theater, directed by Hanskarl Zeiser.

content

The piece tells the story of Blanche DuBois, a no longer very young beauty from the American southern states. Blanche experienced the breakup of her family and the auction of the once proud family estate Belle Rêve (French: "Beautiful Dream"). When she also lost her job as a teacher, she desperately visits her sister Stella, who lives in New Orleans . Stella is sexually addicted to her husband, the worker Stanley Kowalski, who, as the son of Polish immigrants, is blatantly despised by Blanche. Blanche's cultivated but slightly affected behavior and the emphasis on her noble origins are like a red cloth to him. Tensions quickly arise in the cramped living conditions. Ultimately, it is mainly because of Blanche's inability to distinguish between reality and illusion that disaster strikes.

The historical background of the drama is the decline of the old land-owning southern nobility and the simultaneous economic rise of the northern states, which were shaped by industrialization and immigration.

Tennessee Williams didn't know what to call it until shortly before the piece was finished. He then remembered the desire line , an abandoned streetcar line in New Orleans in the early 1950s, the terminus of which was called desire (English "longing, desire, also desire"). He liked it so much that he named the piece after this tram line.

roll

Blanche DuBois is Stella's older sister (who pretends to be the younger) and a high school English teacher in Laurel, Mississippi. It later emerges that she was fired after an affair with a student. She is a sophisticated but fragile woman in her thirties. Blanche and Stella are the last descendants of an ancient southern dynasty. However, the family had to live more and more from the substance and finally lost their property. Blanche could not prevent the loss of the Belle Rêve parent company . She goes to New Orleans to her younger sister Stella and her husband Stanley Kowalski and reveals to them that she is financially at the end. In search of friendliness and protection, but also because of her strong sexual urges, she has entered into many affairs. She avoids reality and lives in a world shaped by her imagination. Their financial and social decline gnaws at their inner stability.

She is appalled by the modest living conditions of her sister and by the animal behavior of the people around her, especially Stanley's. She thinks Stanley is primitive and puts him on a par with animals. She tries to remind Stella of her origins and to alienate Stanley from her, which she succeeds again and again to some extent. That makes you Stanley an enemy. To get rid of Blanche, Stanley asks about her past and learns of her missteps. He uses this information to destroy Blanche. First he spoils her relationship with her new boyfriend Mitch, then he rapes Blanche, who no longer wants to believe after all the revelations. The humiliation and rape completely destroy her psychologically. A few weeks later she was admitted to a mental health institution. Stanley achieved his goal. The characterization of Blanche in the stage directions is also interesting. It is described as a moth when it first appears . The playwright's intention is to create an “impression of the fragile and fleeting” that is further reinforced with the help of “symbols, music, colors and light effects”. Everything Blanche says or does is, as Oppel explains in his interpretation of the drama, "an expression of an always latent desire for confirmation of their external and internal integrity." In the fifth scene, however, Blanche describes himself as a butterfly in a revealing self-assessment . This expresses their loss of reality and the compulsion to hide behind a mask.

Stella Kowalski is Blanche's younger sister, around 24 years old. Her gentle manner separates her from her vulgar environment. She has the same aristocratic background as Blanche, but when the ship of her origin began to sink, she traded Belle Rêve for New Orleans. There she married Stanley, with whom she has a robust, sexual relationship. Your union with Stanley is both spiritual and animal. Stella finds this both refreshing and violent. When Blanche arrives at their place, Stella is between two fronts, namely Blanche and Stanley. She can't believe Blanche's accusation that Stanley doesn't like her, and towards the end she doesn't believe Blanche when she tells her Stanley raped her. Stella's doubts about reality towards the end of the play show that she has more in common with her sister than she thinks. She too does not have the strength to “accept reality as such without restriction and face the truth”.

Stanley Kowalski is Stella's husband. He is loyal to his friends, has a passionate marriage to his wife, but is heartless and cold to Blanche. With his Polish origins, Stanley represents the new, multicultural America. He sees himself as an "equalizer" of all social classes. Stanley is around 30 years old, experienced World War II and now works as a car mechanic. His physical strength is the program for him, and he has no patience for Blanche's deformations of reality. How raw Stanley's behavior appears to Blanche can be seen from the fact that she describes him as a "survivor of the Stone Age". At the end of the piece, Stanley is better adapted to his environment, as Blanche lacks the financial means for her aristocratic lifestyle and, unlike Stanley, she has no business acumen. Though, as Blanche correctly recognizes, Stanley is "on the primitive side" - beating his wife, raping Blanche, and showing no remorse - Blanche becomes a social outsider and Stanley a proud family man. With this figure constellation and plot development, Tennessee Williams seems to express social criticism; so he replied to the question about the meaning of the piece: “Better be careful, otherwise the monkeys will take over the helm! (You better watch out or the apes take over!) "

Harold Mitchell ("Mitch") is Stanley's army comrade, co-worker, and poker fanatic. He is around 30 years old. His appearance is clumsy, he is always sweaty, and he pursues hobbies such as bodybuilding. Even so, he's more sensitive and polite than Stanley and all of his other friends. He lives with his mother, on whom he is heavily dependent and who is dying. Mitch is wooing Blanche. Although he doesn't come close to her social background and can lead the conversation that Blanche expects from a suitable partner, she still sees him as the last chance to make her living situation reasonably bearable, to find protection and a home. But when Mitch learns of Blanche's past from Stanley, he no longer wants to marry her. Drunk he still demands intimacy from the also drunk and so humiliates her that she throws him out of the house by shouting "fire" out of the window. Blanche and Mitch are an unusual constellation: Mitch is not the knightly hero who appears in Blanche's dreams to save her. When Blanche is picked up by the doctor, Stella and Mitch are the only ones who are distraught over the tragedy.

Eunice Hubbel is Stella's friend and lives one floor above her. Her husband Steve Hubbel is another poker friend of Stanley's, they represent the underclass life that Stella has chosen for herself and which puts sex at the center of a partnership. Like Stella, Eunice also accepts her husband's sexual advances that border on the animal, aside from the physical abuse he tries to commit against her. At the end of the play, Eunice forbids Stella from questioning her decision, adding that she has no choice but to believe Stanley. The reality embodied in Stanley's and Stella's common child outweighs Stanley's explanation of the rape of Blanches.

Reception and trivia

  • The film of the same name by Elia Kazan made Marlon Brando world famous and the T-shirt he wore (actually an undershirt) a bestseller.
  • In 1995, Glenn Jordan produced an award-winning television adaptation.
  • André Previn composed the opera A Streetcar Named Desire based on Williams' drama , which premiered on September 19, 1998 in San Francisco .
  • In the episode A Streetcar Named Marge the animated series The Simpsons was the piece titled "Oh, Streetcar!" As Musical listed.
  • In the Simpsons episode "What Animated Women Want", 4th grade sees the film, after which Milhouse tries to behave like Marlon Brando in order to make a successful impression on Lisa.
  • In the Simpsons episode "Marriage Secrets" (Season 5, Episode 22) both "The Cat on the Hot Tin Roof" and "Endstation Sehnsucht" are alluded to. Smithers, as Brick, recalls a conversation with his wife, who accuses him of having changed his acquaintance with Mr. Burns. The conversation is interrupted by Mr. Burns who, as Stanley stands in front of the house and calls for Smithers.
  • The French version was performed by the Comédie-Française with Samuel Le Bihan in the role of Stanley.
  • In 1952 Valerie Bettis choreographed a ballet A Streetcar Named Desire based on music by Alex North for the Slavenska-Franklin Comp. Another ballet in two parts created John Neumeier to music by Prokofiev and Alfred Schnittke , which in the December 3, 1983 Stuttgart premiered
  • The Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar used the play in 1999 as a central element in his feature film Everything about my mother , in which the plot level of the film is partially superimposed on that of the play.
  • The 2013 film drama Blue Jasmine directed by Woody Allen with Cate Blanchett in the lead role is based in loose form on Tennessee Williams' play.
  • In the film Hollywood Cops , the main role of Josh Hartnett tries to use it as a springboard for a great career with an appearance in Endstation Sehnsucht.

literature

Film adaptations

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Horst Oppel : Tennessee Williams · A Streetcar Named Desire. In: Paul Goetsch (Ed.): The American Drama . Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1974, ISBN 3-513-02218-2 , p. 195
  2. ^ Horst Oppel : Tennessee Williams · A Streetcar Named Desire. In: Paul Goetsch (Ed.): The American Drama . Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1974, ISBN 3-513-02218-2 , p. 193
  3. ↑ http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/What_Animated_Women_Want