Like a cannon rolling loose on the deck of a frigate, Marlon Brando crashes through "Streetcar," malicious and violent. Screeching like a cat, walloping tables and women, peeling shirts off his sweaty muscles and tossing away his lines in a punchy, thick-lipped Polish accent, Brando fixes the attention of camera and audience until the sound of his voice seems a separate presence on the screen.

Not that his portrayal of Stanley Kowalski, 100% Polish-American, is entirely a mixture of brat and brute, as some reviewers have presented, doing scant justice to the range and subtlety of his acting. At his most manic, he still displays changes of pace as dazzling as an electric shower. At his very best, the show of force shades off into genuine strength and Kowalski becomes exactly life sized, a well-intentioned and sympathetic character.

Brando's dominant position in the film version of "A Streetcar Named Desire" probably owes little to Tennessee Williams, who wrote both play and movie. Williams made almost no changes in adapting "Streetcar" to the screen, for reasons easy to understand. After setting every line in place in one of the most carefully structured plays on the modern stage, it was too much to expect that the author might try to create an essentially different work of art in the new medium. Instead the dialogue and plot follow the play almost exactly, and nearly all action is within the confines of the stage set, Kowalski's flat in the French Quarter of New Orleans.

The movie is faithful to Williams' original characterization of Blanche DuBois, a faded and schizophrenic Southern belle who sinks progressively into a romantic dreamland of Southern lady hood. Stanley, her brother-in-law, heaves her off the tightrope of sanity after he hears of a previous stage of her illness, a sexual frenzy that, as it is described in hearsay, seems to have been not nymphomania but the frantic efforts of a schizoid to stay consciously alive. Vivien Leigh's performance is as much a tour de force as was Williams' creation of the role.

Where the film departs from the stage production is in the emphasis of the direction. Perhaps to make up for the confinement of the setting, Elia Kazan set his cameramen and actors to highlight every eccentricity in the cast. Brando responded to this kind of direction by developing an overgrowth of quirks, brilliantly freakish, that dominate every scene in which he enters. As he appears before fastidious Blanche for the first time, the camera-eye stares fascinated at a huge sweat-stain on his T-shirt, just above the area where he is scratching himself; for half a minute the sweat mark-plays a major role, presenting itself to Blanche's delicate gaze from different angles. Next we see Brando eating a tomato abstractedly while his wife tries to capture his attention, running her fingers through his hair and kissing his neck; then Brando clearing his place at the table by sweeping the plates to the floor. Always, Brando chewing gum, pushing his words out impulsively like a mouthful of marbles.

The one point at which Legion of Decency excisions left a significant gap is in the next-to-last scene, in which Kowalski's line "You might not be too bad to interfere with," was vetoed for some indiscernible reason. Since this line was intended to suggest the first awakening of dishonorable intentions toward Blanche, Stanley's subsequent apelike pursuit now comes as a surprise. Legion attacks on the obvious "carnal" element in Stanley's relationship to his wife were not too successful; short of cutting her out of the picture, they could not wipe that smirk off her face.

Despite the premium put on their displaying a bag of tricks, both Leigh and Brando may well be heading for Academy Awards. Likewise, Kim Hunter does an outstanding job in the supporting role of Stanley's wife Stella, and Karl Malden is excellent as an awe-struck suitor. Camera work and the musical score are both exceptional. But the net effect of Kazan's direction is more controversial. He has charged the atmosphere to the saturation point with crisis and climax. After two hours trapped in a narrow room with Blanche, sitting under her spray of words alternately cloying and hysterical, the onlookers are likely to sympathize with Kowalski's growing impatience. As a result of keying his action too high and throwing out too much emotion at the audience, Kazan has produced a film that is always exciting, but that in the end is less moving than its script.