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To Kill Blanche

  • Journal of Modern English Drama
  • Abbr : JMBARD
  • 2005, 18(2), pp.119-136
  • Publisher : 한국현대영미드라마학회
  • Research Area : Humanities > English Language and Literature > English Literature > Contemporary English Drama

Seung Jin Baek 1

1경상대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The three film directors, Eliza Kazan, John Erman and Glenn Jordan try to answer the question “How to kill Blanche well?” in the three film versions based on Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire. In filming Williams’s play to be the source of the Hollywood adult art film, Kazan had to change the original to pass the censorship of the Catholic Legion of Decency as well as the Production Code of Administration. So Kazan’s 1951 film adopts several symbols and expressionistic mode to describe the scenes which are against the traditional moral principles. On the other hand, Erman’s 1984 and Jordan's 1995 films realistically describe Williams's text without the censorship which troubled Kazan. In the text and Kazan’s film, a Mexican flower vendor for the dead appears as an apparition in Blanche's imagination rather than a real character. In Erman’s and Jordan’s films, however, the Mexican vendor is treated as a real character. In the scene in which Blanche kisses a newspaper boy, the three directors try new interpretation which is against Williams's idea. The three directors' anguish to answer the question “How to kill Blanche well?” makes the streetcar named desire run still.

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