Dvd/150: A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (Elia Kazan, 1951)

To celebrate Tennessee Williams' birth day I watched the greatest of the film adaptations of his works, Kazan's A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE which, nearly 70 years later, still grips like a vice.

Released four years after Kazan's original Broadway production, he was reluctant to repeat himself but relented and cast three of his original actors - Marlon Brando as 'Stanley', Kim Hunter as 'Stella' and Karl Malden as 'Mitch' - but had to replace Jessica Tandy with the more famous Vivien Leigh, who had played 'Blanche' onstage in London.

In retrospect, the casting was inspired: Vivien's 'outsider' status against the established bond between Brando, Hunter and Malden echoes the disturbing presence of Blanche in the working-class world of Stanley, Stella and Mitch.

Much has been made since of the opposing acting styles of Brando and Leigh with his gaining the more stature, but even he grew to respect her extraordinary performance.

Shelf or charity shop?  Really??  You even have to ask?  Tennessee Williams' extraordinary words, Harry Stradling's cinematography, Alex North's pervasive score, Kim Hunter and Karl Malden's multi-layered performances, the intensity of Kazan's direction, the electricity of Brando and of course, the gossamer, iridescent, quicksilver, haunting brilliance of Vivien Leigh.

150 word review: TENNESSEE WILLIAMS: MAD PILGRIMAGE OF THE FLESH by John Lahr

Don't be put off by the monumental size of Lahr's biography of the landmark playwright, this truly is a magnificently involving and engrossing read.

Lahr opens with the opening night of THE GLASS MENAGERIE on Broadway which launched Williams as the most promising post-war American playwright, and through detailed analysis of his subsequent successes and, in later years, increasing failures, also reveals the troubled man behind the work.

Lahr draws fascinating parallels between the private life and public writing showing Williams to be the most autobiographical of playwrights, wrestling with family and lovers through his fictional characters.

Williams emerges as a troubled man whose self-destructive relationships with their closest to him - lover Frank Merlo, director Elia Kazan, agent Audrey Wood - make him hard to admire but under Lahr's forensic gaze easier to understand.

With unprecedented access to archives of letters and diaries, Lahr has written an unforgettable biography.