We watched A Streetcar Named Desire this evening. It is extraordinary to think that the film is almost sixty years old, but the stellar performances of a then relatively unknown Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh (fresh from Gone with the Wind) have lost none of their power. The producers had to struggle with some of the awkward themes from Tennessee Williams’s play – homosexuality and rape in particular – but the resulting subtleties contrast even more effectively with the brutal animality of Brando’s Stanley Kowalski.  The real star of the show was the playwright himself, entering a prolific period that would produce such masterpieces as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. I couldn’t help but wonder how much of his poor sister, Rose (a beautiful schizophrenic who was institutionalised for much of her adult life), we were seeing in the character of Blanche Du Bois…