Massart Film Society

07/24/2026

07/23/2026

07/23/2026

Tennessee Williams built A Streetcar Named Desire around a gay man who never walks on stage. Blanche's young husband, Allan Grey, shot himself the night she found him in bed with another man.

The 1951 film, with Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh, kept the poetry and deleted the gay man. On stage Blanche tells her husband "you disgust me." On screen she says "you're weak, I've lost respect for you, I despise you," and the audience is left to guess why.

Joseph Breen's Production Code office forced that rewrite. The Catholic Legion of Decency then threatened to condemn the picture anyway.

Warner Bros. panicked and cut roughly four more minutes without telling Elia Kazan. The trims were supervised by Martin Quigley, the trade publisher who had co-written the Production Code back in 1930.

Kazan took it to the New York Times in October 1951 and itemized twelve cuts, one of them three words long. He asked Warner to release both versions clearly labeled so audiences could pick. They said no.

Warner restored the missing minutes in 1993. Allan Grey did not come back with them. He had been written out at script stage, which is the tidiest way to erase someone.

07/23/2026

Anouk Aimée et Jacques Demy dans la brasserie La Cigale pendant le tournage de LOLA (1961)

📷 Photo Ciné Tamaris