The visceral film, considered controversial, decadent, and "morally repugnant" challenged the regulatory Production Code's censors (and the Legion of Decency) with its bold adult drama and sexual subjects (insanity, rape, domestic violence, homosexuality, sexual obsession, and female promiscuity or nymphomania). Ultimately, it signaled the weakening of Hollywood censorship (and groups such as the Catholic Legion of Decency), although a number of scenes were excised, and new dialogue was written. And the Production Code insisted that Stanley be punished for the rape by the loss of his wife's love at the film's conclusion. In 1993, approximately three to five minutes of the censored scenes (i.e., specific references to Blanche's homosexual - or bisexual young husband, her nymphomania, and Stanley's rape of Blanche) were restored in an 'original director's version' video re-release.

D. Rape and Punishment

The second major objection the MPAA raised, was Stanley’s rape of Blanche. Williams absolutely refused to eliminate this scene as he thought it was of a vital need for the play. Phillips quotes:

Streetcar is an extremely and peculiarly moral play, in the deepest and truest sense of the term. ... The rape of Blanche by Stanley is a pivotal, integral truth in the play, without which the play loses its meaning, which is the ravishment of the tender, the sensitive, the delicate, by the savage and brutal forces of modern society (230).

Breen didn’t succeed in getting through his demand, but agreed that the rape could remain in the movie, if only Stanley would be punished for his action. The stage productions ends with Blanche’s famous last words: "Whoever you are – I have always depended on the kindness of strangers," (Williams, Tennessee, Streetcar 142) followed by Stella yelling her name and the doctor taking her away to a mental home. The screenplay had to have another scene added; Stella is seen in front of the tenement building, holding her baby in her arms, she utters words of regret and that she would leave Stanley for sure. This different ending is intended to be Stanley’s punishment, for losing Stella and his child had always been his weak spot, as we are told in scene three. And just this return of Stella in the early beginning makes it so unbelievable that she would be strong enough to leave him after all. She is just like Blanche, always needing someone to cling to, someone that takes care of her and that she is attracted to, anything Stanley offers, although he can be seen as a fierce brute force, following his basic instincts, taking whatever he desires. Furthermore this behavior of his was another point Breen made Warner cut out after the movie was already finished. Originally Stanley says: "Come to think of it – maybe you wouldn’t be bad to – interfere with ..." and after Blanche trying to defend herself with a broken bottle: "Tiger – tiger! Drop the bottle top! Drop it! We’ve had this date with each other from the beginning" (Williams, Tennessee, Streetcar 129-30)! These words clearly expressing that he raped his sister-in-law on purpose. The officially released movie version was missing both sentences, giving the impression that both, Stanley and Blanche, were drunk and a "bad" thing happened for which Stanley is being punished in the end. Breen’s only objection were to words and plot only, thus leaving Kazan the opportunity to work with symbols that couldn’t be used in a stage production. Earlier in the scene Stanley uncaps a bottle of beer, letting it spill over – a symbol for his sexual energy – and immediately after the rape a cut to a street cleaner’s hose is inserted, another strong phallic image. Kazan later calls it "a little too obvious," but it helped him underline the rape without showing it on the screen at all, "because in those days we had to be very indirect in depicting material of that kind" (Phillips 231).

And so it was that the Hollywood studios struggled for three years with Streetcar, and the nation's great theatrical hit remained stalled in the pipeline. Finally, in April of 1950, a first draft of a screenplay was ready; independent producer Charles Feldman was producing the film for Warner Brothers. Still, the Breen Office fretted. The story still turned on rape, and the play's intimation of homosexuality remained prominent, and Blanche still seemed vaguely nymphomaniacal. Director Elia Kazan watered down Blanche's lustful past and the remembered homosexuality of her first husband, but he was adamant on Stanley's rape of Blanche. As Tennessee Williams put it eloquently in a letter to the Breen Office, any further changes would be crass, because A Streetcar Named Desire was already "an extremely and peculiarly moral play, in the deepest and truest sense of the word." Williams announced to Breen that he and director Elia Kazan would stand for no changes that tampered with the fact of Stanley's rape of Blanche, warning Breen that the simplistic moralizing of prewar Hollywood was hypocritical in the wake of new realities: