Whenever a play or novel is adapted into a cinematic depiction of the text, critics will evaluate the film either positively or negatively. It is necessary to understand the liberties a director has and understand that an adaptation allows someone else to depict a play or novel in a new and inventive way. Creativity and uniqueness are sometimes necessary in adapting a play to film. Critics are always chasing the idea of ​​fidelity, but the truth is that adaptations have as much to offer as the play itself. Elia Kazan's 1951 adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire is not faithful to the play, but its authenticity and many similarities allow the adaptation to become its own personality. The directorial changes, created by Elia Kazan, must exist to refute the idea that fidelity is always correct in a film adaptation. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an Original Essay When a story intended for the stage is translated into film, certain points of divergence and contention naturally arise. Elia Kazan adapted Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire and stayed mostly faithful to the original play, but was able to add more to the story in a cinematic format. Kazan was able to explore locations mentioned in the play like the bowling alley by integrating them onto the big screen. The reader could now imagine the bowling alley where Stanley and his friends spent so much time and he could understand the atmosphere because it was now in front of the reader rather than just in his mind. Kazan mostly stuck to Williams' script, but his portrayal of the characters seemed to falter in comparison to that of the written play. Blanche DuBois, in the play, was an insecure and arrogant woman who had just lost her reputation and her place in society. . However, in the film, Blanche is less reserved than in the play. In the play there is a scene where a young man comes to collect money for the newspaper and Blanche is home alone to answer the door. When she opens the door, he lets the young man in and asks him for money for the local newspaper. After Blanche reveals that she has no money to give the young man, she continues to make the polite young man stay against her will and against the reader and can sense the discomfort the young man feels until Blanche kisses him and he leaves. However, in the film adaptation, the young man is extremely comfortable with Blanche and seems seduced by her charm. In the film, when Blanche kisses the young man, he leans in to kiss her too, completely changing the atmosphere of the entire scene. For someone simply watching the movie version of A Streetcar Named Desire, this scene gives the person a different image of Blanche. DuBois as the reader imagines Blanche as a completely different woman. Williams does not create Blanche as a sympathetic character, and in the film version, Vivien Leigh was as well-liked by her co-stars as she was in the play. Being from England and an outcast to begin with, "Leigh's presence on the set was clearly unwelcome and she repeatedly disrupted the harmony of the status quo of a group of actors who had all worked together previously in the same room” (Cahir). Blanche was unwanted in the play, and in the film, Vivien was unwanted on set, but the director's choice to cast Vivien as Blanche created adynamic on the big screen which gave the film great success and helped the character in his own role. authentic way. Directors have complete control over what they direct, which, according to the critic, is either a good or bad thing: "Adaptation is always an act of interpretation, and judgments about success adaptation will always involve comparative analysis. interpretation of the source text in the light of an interpretation of the adaptation” (Gordon, Robert and Olaf). There will always be criticism of every director when a play leaves the stage and is shot on the big screen, because people don't like to see variations of the same thing. Different performances of the same work allow people to expand their minds and discover the creativity and minds of others, like that of a director, and build new ideas from old ideas. Authenticity and interpretation are extremely important because no two people think the same. Tennessee Williams and Elia Kazan are similar in many ways, but each has their own way of creating a new idea. Kazan made minor changes to A Streetcar Named Desire and was a huge success, allowing viewers to see the characters differently and visualize more of the scene. so only a few stage directions. Kazan was able to bring his own vision of the scene onto the set and he chose people to play each character based on his idea of ​​what each character looked like. Marlon Brando played Stanley, and to a reader, Stanley may not have been as attractive as he was in the film. In the play, Stanley was a dominant and controlling man, but the film version took that dominance and combined it with sexuality, creating a sympathetic, but also somewhat fearful, character. Kazan's decision to cast Brando as Stanley allows the audience to represent Kazan's idea of ​​Stanley in his mind, showing that authenticity allows for many interpretations of a work, right down to the appearance of the characters and how much appearance plays a role in a character's personality and behavior. Although Kazan's ideas about the scene and characters may differ from those of the reader who would not cast Marlon Brando as Stanley, Kazan made the decision to keep the majority of the storyline the same throughout the film, which was a benefit of following the rules. fidelity that everyone questions in the adaptation of a play to the cinema. Allowing the director to make these changes in a film adaptation benefits the work because “Each act of adaptation involves a new cultural appropriation of the original text, and old texts are preserved.” living in the contemporary cultural imagination through these same acts of appropriation” (Gordon, Robert and Olaf). A Streetcar Named Desire gained popularity through the film adaptation and made Tennessee Williams famous in different fields. “Although the role of the reader/viewer is recognized in the screen adaptation literature, it has not been studied in detail” (Raitt). The true critic is not evaluated when it comes to loyalty. The audience is the deciding factor when it comes to whether or not an adaptation is successful. If there is no evidence to support the idea that fidelity elicits a better audience response than an adaptation, then there is no argument to support the idea that every adaptation should be identical to the piece it represents. The audience should primarily be but “too often, however, the success or failure of an adaptation is narrowly defined” (Gordon, Robert, and Olaf)..