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The observation that Woody Allen's 2013 Blue Jasmine represents a filmic response to Tennessee Williams's 1947 play A Streetcar Named Desire recurs in numerous reviews (see, for instance, "Cate Blanchett Finds Humor"; Corliss; Dargis; Papamichael; Schwarzbaum). Allen denies having appropriated Williams's play or, for that matter, the Bernie Madoff scandal; instead, he claims that a story told by his wife triggered the screenplay's central idea (Itzkoff; Shoard). While the work of art speaks for itself and its creator's claims about the creative process ultimately only matter to the extent to which a given interpreter chooses to accept them, it is worth pointing out that Allen's refusal to acknowledge the presence of Tennessee Williams in this work also belies the overall significance of the playwright in Allen's oeuvre (see Gothard 400). The fact that Cate Blanchett, who plays Jasmine French in Allen's film, received considerable critical attention for her portrayal of Williams's Blanche DuBois in Liv Ullmann's 2009 production of Streetcar is reason enough to wonder whether she was cast as Jasmine for this very reason. The easily discernible echoes of Williams's drama about a woman's financial and emotional decline into social dislocation and madness are not at the center of this essay, however. Rather, they serve as points of reference for exploring intermedial relations between theatre and film.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137515476_3

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