'A Streetcar Named Desire' inspired by the Bernard Madof Scandal

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I don't know about the Madof scandal (haven't been living in the US for a long time), but I taught Streetcar for more than 20 years, and find that Allen also echoed it (LOUDLY) in Melinda and Melinda - it's so obvious I told my students to watch it and count the similarities (but not to yell 'Stella' and take a shot every time they saw one, or they wouldn't be sober enough to do the assignment).

Here we've got the repeated 'blue theme' of Streetcar, only then, it was the 'blue piano' playing 'off stage' (read the play) and the 'Varsouviana' playing in Blanche's head, and here it's 'Blue Moon' that brings back Jasmine's memories.

Some lines were lifted from the play or the film version. Stanley asks, 'Since when are you giving me orders?' and I think it's Ginger who says to Chili, 'You're not giving me orders.'

Jasmine has already had one drink when she arrives at Ginger's apartment, and then she makes a sort of pretence of looking for the liquor cabinet to have another drink - just like Blanche on her first night in New Orleans.

Of course, there's the whole 'arrival' scene when Jasmine's taxi arrives at Ginger's place and she's shocked by the poor neighborhood. She says that the apartment is cosy - just like Blanche tries to cover up her shock at Stella's flat with a forced compliment.

Blanche has flashbacks to her life when she was taken care of by her rich, but 'improvident' father; all the men in Blanche's family had major sexual affairs ('epic fornications' she calls them in the play; 'debauches' is the word used in the film) which led to the loss of their fortunes. In this film, it's the revelation of one of her husband's affairs that leads Jasmine to rat him out to the IRS, which then immediately leads to him losing all his money. So we've got a woman who - we are told several times - was used to being taken care of by a man who had affairs and lost all his money, quite like Blanche's case as the Southern Belle whose sexually profligate father and grandfathers and uncles sold the plantation piece by piece to pay for their affairs.

Also in Streetcar, Blanche is relieved to find that Stanley travels a lot on business and won't be in the flat much (said in the first scene of the play) and she also asks if it 'will be decent' for her to stay in such a small flat with Stanley. Stanley, for his part, is angry after a time because Blanche's presence is putting a crimp in his sex life. Allen morphs this into Chili wanting to move in and not being able to do so because of Jasmine's presence in the flat.

At the end of Streetcar, the lovers Stan and Stella carry on with their lives (though they only have one son, who is an infant) and Blanche is take away to a mental hospital. Similarly, Ginger and Chili (was Allen eating Thai food when he wrote this?) end up happy ever after while Jasmine is mumbling to herself on a park bench.

Stanley is Polish; Auggie embarrasses Ginger by telling Polish jokes.

In the play, Blanche wears Jasmine perfume. In this film, at one point Ginger wears too much perfume (she says it's French perfume; Blanche wore quite expensive perfume, presumably French - it's more expensive in the play than in the film of Steetcar). In the play, Stanley accuses Blanche of spraying the apartment with perfume, so in both cases you've got an apartment reeking of perfume.

Allen has echoed Streetcar more in more than two films. I often find lines or snippets from Streetcar in his work. In Melinda and Melinda, the actress playing Melinda even at one moment makes a gesture (touching her temples, very early in the film) exactly as Vivian Leigh did as Blanche when Blanche complained about her nerves. Makes me wonder if he has his actors watch that film when he's drawing on it for his own plot.