"Stella! Hey, STELLLLAAAA!" Sixty years later, that outburst remains one of the most famous moments in film history, but the movie it comes from, A Streetcar Named Desire, has a place of its own in the annals of filmdom. And why is that? Let's tear off our T-shirts and investigate.

The praise: A Streetcar Named Desire was nominated for all four acting Oscars: Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh as the leads, Karl Malden and Kim Hunter for supporting. Three of them won, too -- the sole loser was Brando. (That seems surprising now, but it made some sense at the time. Brando was new to movies, and he lost to Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen.) To date, only one other movie, Network, has won three acting Oscars, and no movie has won four. Streetcar also won an Oscar for its art direction, and was nominated for best picture, director, cinematography, screenplay, costume design, music, and sound recording. In 1998, it placed 45th on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 best American films ever made, and fell only slightly to 47th in the 2007 revised list.

The context: Tennessee Williams had his first success as a playwright in the mid-1940s with The Glass Menagerie, but it was A Streetcar Named Desire that cemented his status as an American legend. The sultry drama, set in New Orleans (where Williams had lived while writing for the Works Progress Administration), premiered on Broadway in December 1947 to tumultuous acclaim. It ran for two years and won the Pulitzer Prize for drama. It was as hot as a tin roof with a cat on it.

Kazan stayed as faithful as possible to the stage version, following an adaptation by Williams and screenwriter Oscar Saul. A few scenes were moved to other locations (the bowling alley, a nightclub), but for the most part Kazan kept the action confined to the Kowalskis' apartment. A one-set play can be a practical matter in live theater; in a movie, it's a conscious decision. Kazan recognized that he could underscore Blanche's deteriorating mental condition by making it feel like the walls of the set were closing in on her. It might have been more "cinematic" to take the film beyond that one dismal setting, but it wouldn't have been as thematically effective.

Certain things had to be changed for the movie, though. Material that was suitable for Broadway plays -- which were understood to be meant for grown-ups -- wouldn't necessarily fly at the movies, where there was no system in place to distinguish between entertainment for adults and entertainment for children, and so everything had to be suitable for everyone. Streetcar was heavily censored for the screen. References to Blanche's past promiscuity were cut, along with the information that her late husband had been a homosexual. Her flirtation with the paperboy was toned down. The climactic scene between Blanche and Stanley was edited to make its outcome somewhat ambiguous. This material was later restored, though, and any version you see today -- including all the DVD releases -- will be the complete "director's cut."

The movie: Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh), a fading Southern belle, comes to stay with her sister, Stella (Kim Hunter), and brother-in-law, Stanley (Marlon Brando), at their squalid apartment in New Orleans after finally losing the DuBois family's estate back in Mississippi. Blanche is jittery and defensive, perhaps on the verge of a mental breakdown, and her refined sensibilities are offended by Stanley's coarse, animalistic behavior. She likes one of his friends, though, a nice fellow named Mitch (Karl Malden).

What it influenced: Like many classic films, this one has a couple famous moments that everyone knows whether they've seen the movie or not. One is Blanche's line: "I've always depended on the kindness of strangers." The other is Stanley shouting upstairs to his wife: "Stella! Hey, Stella!!"

In the latter case, it was obviously the delivery that earned notoriety, not the words themselves. That moment is a perfect encapsulation of Brando's performance in the film: soaking wet, shirt torn, face twisted in anguish and sorrow, bellowing like an animal. It was replayed in countless montages, retrospectives, and clip shows, and parodied just as frequently. Soon it was impossible to call a character Stella without making the audience think of that scene. The name has been tainted forever.

Blanche's line is nearly as well-known, and is likewise a good summary of her character as a genteel Southern woman whose interactions with strangers have led to her downfall. You've heard it quoted in plenty of sitcoms, and in the 1979 film All That Jazz. If Rue McClanahan's Golden Girls character, Blanche Deveraux (obviously inspired by Streetcar) never said it, I'd be surprised.

Tennessee Williams' play was adapted several more times after this, each time for television, each version living in the shadow of the 1951 original. Argentina TV produced a Spanish-language version in 1956, and Sweden did one in its native tongue in 1981. In 1984, ABC aired a production starring Ann-Margret and Treat Williams in the Leigh and Brando roles. Jessica Lange and Alec Baldwin headlined a 1992 Broadway revival that was filmed and broadcast on CBS in 1995.

For many of us, the most famous incarnation of A Streetcar Named Desire is Oh, Streetcar!, the musical version in which Marge Simpsons and Ned Flanders starred in a 1992 episode of The Simpsons. Like many parodies, this one is more sublimely effective if you've seen the play or the movie.

Marlon Brando had already dazzled theater audiences, but this was most moviegoers' first introduction to him. (His only previous film was 1950's The Men, which didn't garner much attention.) As we discussed in our examination of On the Waterfront (1954), Brando brought a new style of acting to movies. Where film acting had generally been formal and theatrical before, Brando was raw and natural, much more realistic. This was partly due to his training at the Actors Studio, where "Method acting" was taught; Streetcar co-stars Kim Hunter and Karl Malden were also alumni. Roger Ebert wrote of Brando's impact:

Before this role, there was usually a certain restraint in American movie performances. Actors would portray violent emotions, but you could always sense to some degree a certain modesty that prevented them from displaying their feelings in raw nakedness. Brando held nothing back, and within a few years his was the style that dominated Hollywood movie acting. This movie led directly to work by Brando's heirs such as Montgomery Clift, James Dean, Jack Nicholson and Sean Penn.

Vivien Leigh struggled with bipolar disorder and other illnesses throughout most of her life, and would later say that playing Blanche DuBois "tipped me over into madness." The London production (directed by her husband, Sir Laurence Olivier) taxed her physically and emotionally, requiring her to enact Blanche's mental breakdown seven times a week for nine months straight. Why she agreed to do it again for the movie is anyone's guess, but that process proved grueling, too. She made only three more films before she died in 1967.

What to look for: Brando's the one who gets all the attention, but don't forget: Blanche, not Stanley, is the main character. She's on the screen almost the entire time, slowly suffocating in Stanley and Stella's cramped apartment. Kazan's desire to make the setting claustrophobic pays off: the room really does start to seem smaller as time goes by.

The film is boldly sexual, but it's entirely through implication. The word "sex" is never used, of course (not in 1951!). Even the uncensored director's cut is discrete in the way it fills us in on Blanche's history. Yet you can see in the way Blanche and Stella look at Stanley that they view him as a dangerous, sensual creature. It's his pure animal magnetism that brings Stella back to him time and time again, and that intrigues Blanche as much as it disgusts her.

Which brings us to another matter. Regardless of your age, gender, or sexual preference, I don't see how you can look at Brando in Streetcar and not think: Good grief, that is an attractive man. He's in fantastic physical condition and wears T-shirts -- altered by costumers to be tighter than usual -- that show off his physique. He's frequently sweaty or otherwise soaking wet. As much as it was possible in 1951 to make a movie character sexual without showing any sex, Streetcar did it.

What's the big deal: A Streetcar Named Desire was a step forward in the evolution of American movies, bringing audiences startling, raw emotion that they'd seldom seen on the big screen before. It also introduced them to the Method stylings of Marlon Brando, who would soon become one of the most important and influential actors of all time.

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Eric D. Snider (website) has always depended on the spare change of strangers.