MUBI

And who doesn’t wanna know about long rainy afternoons in New Orleans(during what I assume Williams tried to interpret as depression era)…when an hour isn’t just an hour, but a little piece of eternity dropped in your hands…and who knows what to do with it then? It’s quite possible that Blanche DuBois, and almost purposely as Karen Stone in what could be represented as the symbol of Williams later years and later works. It is quite possible that these two women are a large portion of his collected thoughts on the sexuality and reality of strangers he had observed or come in contact with in his life. These two women, or personas also represent the man himself. They represent the image of women that was clearly visualized in Tennessee’s own early life living in what he saw as the south. Or maybe(you notice certain differences as his work progresses) Blanche represents the beginning of a journey to which characters of later works like Lawrence Shannon in Night of the Iguana, Catherine Holly in Suddenly Last Summer, and the culmination of Karen Stone in his only novel. We get the image of what the man must have been like in his final years, heavily drinking, broken dreams and lost loves, swimming and typing away in his isolated Key West. There’s a line from Night of the Iguana that really expresses the great longing, desires, and finally the somber romanticism of Williams late life and last works:

“How calmly does the olive branch? Observe the sky begin to blanch…without a cry, without a prayer. With no betrayal of despair”