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Brief Encounter
1945 Romance / Drama
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Credits
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Director: David Lean
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Script: Noel Coward, Anthony Havelock-Allan, David Lean, Ronald Neame
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Photo: Robert Krasker
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Music: Sergei Rachmaninoff
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Cast: Celia Johnson (Laura Jesson),
Trevor Howard (Dr Alec Harvey),
Stanley Holloway (Albert Godby),
Joyce Carey (Myrtle Bagot),
Cyril Raymond (Fred Jesson),
Everley Gregg (Dolly Messiter),
Marjorie Mars (Mary Norton),
Margaret Barton (Beryl Walters),
Wilfred Babbage (Policeman),
Alfie Bass (Waiter)
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Country: UK
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Language: English
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Runtime: 86 min; B&W
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Aka: Noel Coward's Brief Encounter
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Summary
Each Thursday, housewife Laura Jesson treats herself to a
day in the nearby town of Milford, to do some shopping and watch a film
at the cinema. Afterwards, she takes the train back to her
comfortable suburban home where her husband and two children await
her. It's a drab life but Laura is not unhappy. Then,
one evening, she strikes up an acquaintance with Alec Harvey, a man she
meets whilst waiting for a train. He is a doctor who does
consultancy work at Milford hospital every Thursday. Like her, he
is married, middle-aged, and has two young children. After that
one chance encounter, Laura’s life suddenly changes. She begins
seeing Alec every Thursday afternoon. At first, neither sees
anything wrong with their liaisons. But then they realise that
they have become more than just friends. They are in love -
hopelessly in love...
Review
Although often misrepresented (usually by people who have never seen
the film), Brief Encounter is
assuredly one of the great all-time classics of British cinema - and
also one of the finest of fictional romances. It was made in the
last year of World War II, when social attitudes and individual
morality were very different from what they are today. The
conflict that we see in this film - between society’s expectations of
married people and an individual’s need for emotional fulfilment - is
quite hard to appreciate today, yet it is this which gives the film its
power and makes its ending so devastatingly poignant. The story
is every bit as tragic and as moving as Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliette, a tale of two
lovers whose hopes of a happy future together are cruelly frustrated by
circumstances beyond their control.
Brief Encounter was adapted
from a 30-minute one act play, entitled Still Life, which Noel Coward wrote
in 1935. It was directed by David Lean, the last and best of his
four collaborations with Coward. Celia Johnson was offered the
lead part in the film on the strength of her performance in an earlier
Coward-Lean film, This Happy Breed
(1944). Her co-star, Trevor Howard, was relatively inexperienced,
this being only his third film role.
More than anything, it is the performances which make Brief Encounter such an
unforgettable film. Celia Johnson is extraordinary in this film,
conveying, with great subtlety and pathos, the torment of a love affair
that takes possession of her character, and ends up by tearing her life
apart. The sense of aching loss she shows towards the end of the
film is so real that it is almost unbearable to watch - a naked
spectacle of desolation and anguish. Whilst Johnson and Howard
dominate the film, we can still appreciate the contributions from the
supporting cast. Particularly memorable are Stanley Holloway and
Joyce Carey, whose characters’ blatant over-the-counter flirtations
provide an amusing (and bitterly ironic) counterpoint to the main story.
Noel Coward not only wrote the film’s screenplay, but he also had some
input into its production (although not so much as in his earlier
collaborations with Lean). One of the things he insisted on was
the use of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 as the main theme for
the film. It was an inspired decision because this particular
piece of music, used generously throughout the film, underscores
perfectly the emotional turbulence which gradually surfaces and
ultimately engulfs the two protagonists as their love affair develops,
from a thing of lyrical beauty to one of immense tragedy. Lean's
inspired composition of the film lends it further emotional depth and
realism - particularly the use of film noir-like cinematography
(emphasising the sense of guilt and isolation) and narrative flashbacks
with a voiceover which allows us to share Laura's intimate
thoughts.
One problem posed by the production was where to shoot the railway
station sequences, which were an integral part of the story. Because of
blackout restrictions at the time of filming, the south of England
(where most of the shoot was done) had to be ruled out. The
production team had to go as far as Carnforth station in
Lancashire, which was sufficiently far from London that adequate notice
could be given for the lights to be extinguished in the event of an air
raid.
Although David Lean and his producers had some anxiety over how the
film would be received when it was released (at a time of national
austerity), it proved to be a critical and commercial success.
Celia Johnson won the New York Film Critics Circle Best Actress Award
and was nominated for an Academy Award in 1947 (one of the film’s three
Oscar nominations, the others being for Best Director and Best
Screenplay). The film’s biggest trophy was the Grand Prize at Cannes in
1946.
If Brief Encounter were made
today it would almost certainly appear over-sentimental, shallow,
cliché-riddled and unconvincing. None of these epithets
applies to the film that David Lean made back in 1945, with limited
resources and during one of England's bleakest periods in the Twentieth
Century. The emotional impact of this film is keenly felt and
absolutely genuine, and the story it tells is one which has universal
appeal. No one, apart from the most cynical and insensitive of
spectators, can fail to be moved by the film’s final scene, a
tear-jerker in the truest sense of the word.
© James Travers 2008
For World Cinema on DVD...
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