A Streetcar Named Desire (12A)

This wouldn't have got a 12A on its first release back in 1951.

There's an inevitable staginess to Tennessee Williams' devastating portrait of delusion and cruelty, but director Elia Kazan catches the squalid, claustrophobic atmosphere of a New Orleans tenement just right. Besides, the scenery is overwhelmed by the titanic battle of wills going on between Vivien Leigh's fey, genteel Blanche DuBois and Brando's dark-eyed brute Stanley Kowalski. Watching them together is like witnessing a fight between a Persian cat and a Rottweiler – the outcome's never in doubt, but the contest is more fascinating than you'd think possible. Leigh is magnificent as the belle who's lost her chime, so terrified of growing old she can't see how pathetic and vulnerable her act has become – "I don't want realism... I want magic!" she cries. Her scenes with earnest suitor Karl Malden are among the best she ever played, better even than those show-stopping bouts with Brando.