“All of us, all the time, on the line, end of the road, edge of town. We revise and we reconsider. We are all of us heading toward oblivion all the time. We can re-shape and alter – through art, through religion, through love, through sex, through demented denial – but we do not have a clear line from birth to death. We dance a lot. We dream a lot. We are betrayed and we betray a great, great deal. And this is Blanche, who has been dancing a long time, and is now tired, and who is suspended from life for a time at the conclusion of this play, to gather her wits, to dance another dance, to meet another stranger. Of course I am Blanche. But so are you. And so is everyone else out there. The comedy comes from the denial of so many that they can’t understand her.”
Tennessee Williams on the character of Blanche, from “A Streetcar Named Desire
Tennessee Williams was and is a great poet and playwright, as well as being a deeply complex, fascinating human being. When I was a child, having seen and adored Gone With the Wind, which seeded my lifelong passion for film and that charming rogue (on screen, at least) Clark Gable – then not too long thereafter seeing A Streetcar Named Desire – both featuring the actress Vivien Leigh – it is an understatement to say that my little adolescent mind was blown. Blown.
This – this is where Scarlett O’Hara ends up?!! It could be argued that tying the two characters together directly makes little sense, but that’s exactly what I did and one assumes Elia Kazan, in casting Leigh, did as well, aware of that potent connection for audiences. GWTW was, after all, the biggest novel and film of the 20th century to date when Streetcar was filmed in 1951, a mere twelve years after GWTW opened to world-wide acclaim. That I saw both films as a middle-schooler and lost my little mind is unsurprising as my imagination has even been a gift and curse.
This is where Scarlett O’Hara ends up? Argh. Surely, surely she and Rhett get back together?! (The follow-up novel – Scarlett – which I read when it came out, was so bad and so forgettable, I forget what happened, to any of the characters…!)
And then, gentle reader, I saw That Hamilton Woman, also featuring Leigh, playing opposite to her paramour and future husband Laurence Olivier. Said to be Winston Churchill’s favorite film, it’s a fictional but historically accurate (with some liberties taken) account of British naval hero Horatio Nelson’s greatest battles as well as his love affair with the beautiful but married and not quite upper-class (read: good enough for him) Lady Emma Hamilton (her portrait is featured).
It’s a delightful film, in black and white but sumptuously costumed and set, filled with character actors doing their best stiff-upper lip style British thang – including the always wonderful Gladys Cooper – total catnip for the burgeoning film fanatic, but, like Streetcar, ultimately tragic, and haunting. When I am feeling particularly dramatic and full of myself, I like to pronounce the film’s final line: There is no then, there is no after. which is right up there with Blanche’s last line (it occurs to me that seeing these films during my highly charged adolescence might’ve been a bad thing?!): ‘Whoever you are – I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.”
In what way do these women resemble myself or any average person? They don’t, although love stories often end badly (tell me about it). And yet. Do we, ever, really regret those heady moments of love and infatuation? I don’t. Not really. Was I, often and often, an idiot, pursuing this or that crush or lover to the nth degree? Oh lordy, lordy, yes! Love is a drug; one of the most powerful.
When in love we are such fools. as we are in life itself. And that there is where these broken and bruised but – especially in Scarlett’s case – indomitable women do resemble us all. Proud, indignant, defensive, reactive, closed-off, reckless, too cautious, weak, blinded by love or hate or obsession, silly, greedy, doubtful – all of these and more.
“We are all of us heading toward oblivion all the time.” Best to have fun, and forgive – ourselves especially – along the way, eh? Eh.