25 Greatest Warner Bros Movies Ever

There's good reason why Marlon Brando is considered the father of modern acting performance, and it mostly comes from his rather unfortuitously snubbed performance in A Streetcar Named Desire.

His Stanley is a picture of emotional indulgence - a primal, animal-like precursor to method acting in later decades and the archetype for intense acting. He's the centre piece - and infinitely watchable as it - in this hot, lascivious film that was decried as amoral, outrageous and dripping in sin by the critics of the day. Were it released now, it would still be profoundly affecting, but you sense there wouldn't be the same outrage.

And alongside Brando's blunt instrument, there's a lot of subtlety to balance the chemistry. Even in Stanley himself there is something of an essential tenderness that makes him not wholly monstrous, but in both Kim Hunter's Stella and Vivien Leigh's Blanche you ave contradictions and complexity that broaden the spectrum of intrigue beautifully.