My Best Shot: A Streetcar Named Desire
I’ve tried. I swear I’ve tried. But after numerous repeated viewings, I still look upon Vivien Leigh’s Blache DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire and wonder what gains the feisty, ever resourceful Scarlett O’Hara thinks she’ll get out of posturing so self-consciously and pitching her voice around the range of a twittery coo. It’s a testament to Leigh’s legendary performance as that other Southern belle in Gone with the Wind that it haunts this role too. Yet Leigh is so much more stiffly heightened here, even while keeping within a similar vein of theatricality, that we can’t quite say she’s approaching Blanche as an aged, more destitute remainder of who Scarlett once was either (though now that I would’ve liked to see).
