Directed by Elia Kazan. Written by Tennessee Williams and Oscar Saul.

Blanche DuBois

• The first time I laid eyes on him I thought to myself, "That man is my executioner!"

• Some things are not forgivable. Deliberate cruelty is not forgivable. It is the one unforgivable thing in my opinion and the one thing of which I have never, never been guilty.

• I don't want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic. I try to give that to people. I do misrepresent things. I don't tell truths. I tell what ought to be truth.

• Whoever you are: I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.
  • Note: the bolded portion is ranked #75 in the American Film Institute's list of the top 100 movie quotations in American cinema.

• Tarantula was the name of it! I stayed at a hotel called the Tarantula Arms! Yes, a big spider. That's where I brought my victims. Yes, I have had many meetings with strangers. After the death of Allan, meetings with strangers was all I seemed able to fill my empty heart with. I think it was panic — just panic — that drove me from one to another, searching for some protection. Here, there and then in the most unlikely places. Then, at last, in a seventeen-year-old boy. But someone wrote to the superintendent about it: "This woman is morally unfit for her position!" True? Yes... unfit somehow anyway.

Stanley Kowalski

• Stella. Hey, STELLA!
  • Note: ranked #45 in the American Film Institute's list of the top 100 movie quotations in American cinema.

• You know what luck is? Luck is believing you're lucky, that's all... To hold a front position in this rat-race, you've got to believe you are lucky.

• Don't you ever talk that way to me. "Pig," "Polack," "disgusting," "vulgar," "greasy" — those kind of words have been on your tongue and your sister's tongue just too much around here. What do you think you are, a pair of queens? Now just remember what Huey Long said — that every man's a king — and I'm the king around here, and don't you forget it.

• Listen, baby, when we first met — you and me — you thought I was common. Well, how right you was. I was common as dirt. You showed me a snapshot of the place with them columns, and I pulled you down off them columns, and you loved it, having them colored lights goin.' And wasn't we happy together? Wasn't it all okay till she showed here? And wasn't we happy together? Wasn't it all okay till she showed here, hoity-toity, describin' me like a ape?

Dialogue

Blanche: You're married to a madman.

Stella: I wish you'd stop taking it for granted that I'm in something I want to get out of.

Blanche: What you are talking about is desire, just brutal desire. The name of that rattle-trap streetcar that bangs through the Quarter, up one old narrow street and down another.

Stella: Haven't you ever ridden on that streetcar?

Blanche: It brought me here, where I'm not wanted and where I'm ashamed to be.

Stella: Don't you think your superior attitude is a little out of place?

Blanche: May I speak plainly?... If you'll forgive me, he's common... He's like an animal. He has an animal's habits. There's even something subhuman about him. Thousands of years have passed him right by, and there he is. Stanley Kowalski, survivor of the Stone Age, bearing the raw meat home from the kill in the jungle. And you — you here waiting for him. Maybe he'll strike you or maybe grunt and kiss you — that is, if kisses have been discovered yet. His "poker night" you call it. This party of apes.

Cast

• Vivien Leigh - Blanche DuBois
• Marlon Brando - Stanley Kowalski
• Kim Hunter - Stella Kowalski
• Karl Malden - Harold "Mitch" Mitchell