Brief Encounter (1945)

Director:

David Lean

Writers:

Release Date:

24 August 1946 (USA)

Genre:

Romance | Drama

Tagline:

A story of the most precious moments in woman's life!

Plot:

Meeting a stranger in a railway station, a woman is tempted to cheat on her husband.

Plot Keywords:

Love | Railway Station | Railway | Doctor | Housewife

Awards:

Nominated for 3 Oscars. Another 2 wins

US TV Schedule:

Thur. Dec. 10

9:00 AM

TCM

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, Tea Room Assistant

Also Known As:

Noel Coward's Brief Encounter (UK) (complete title)

Runtime:

86 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Recording)

Certification:

Argentina:Atp | Spain:13 (DVD rating) | Australia:G | South Korea:15 | Netherlands:AL | Finland:K-16 | Hong Kong:I | Sweden:15 | UK:PG | USA:Approved (PCA #11819, Adult Audience) | Ireland:(Banned)

Filming Locations:

Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, England, UK

Company:

Cineguild

Trivia:

The screenplay was adapted and based on Noel Coward's 1935 short one-act (half-hour) stage play "Still Life". It was expanded from five short scenes in a train station (the refreshment tea room of Milford Junction Station) to include action in other settings (Laura's house, the apartment of the Dr.Harvey's friend, restaurants, parks, train compartments, shops, a car, a boating lake and at the cinema),

Goofs:

Continuity: As Laura enters the apartment, the pattern of water marks on her back changes.

Quotes:

Dr. Alec Harvey: [hearing a trio playing in the restaurant] There should be a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Musical Instruments.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "United States of Tara: Inspiration (#1.4)" (2009)

Soundtrack:

Piano Concerto No. 2

"Huge Cloudy Symbols Of A High Romance"

Steam ... cut-glass accents ... Rachmaninov's 2nd Piano Concerto ... the refreshment room at Milford Junction ... "the shame of the whole thing - the guiltiness, the fear ..." - it all adds up to David Lean's famous film treatment of the Noel Coward tale of love blossoming and withering at a suburban railway station. Laura Jesson is a complacent middle-class housewife who gets a piece of grit in her eye one day and is helped by Doctor Alec Harvey, and the romance begins.

Coward's screenplay is characteristic of his oeuvre. There is the neat precision of the circular plot, beginning and ending with the brainless intrusion of Dolly Messiter, and the matching sub-plot of the Albert-Mrs. Bagot courtship. There are tongue-in-cheek self-references (on the cinema screen, "Flames Of Passion" coming shortly) and the trademark Cowardian grounding in exaggerated Englishness ("One has one's roots, after all"). Most typical of all is that overwrought cascade of middle-class vocabulary (" ...so utterly humiliated and defeated, and so dreadfully, dreadfully ashamed"). Coward patronises working-class people abominably. Albert and Mrs. Bagot amble effortlessly through their romance because, bless them, they are simple folk. Alec and Laura suffer torments, having so much more sensitivity, and, you see, they have reputations to lose ("the furtiveness and the lying outweigh the happiness").

Having made the transition from editor to director in 1942, Lean was at the helm for the fourth time for "Brief Encounter", all four films being Coward projects - and a highly creditable job he made of this one. The scene in which Alec explains coal-dust inhalation and Laura falls in love is a model of sensitive direction. Reflections of Laura's face in the train window and the make-up mirror suggest in visual terms the existence of her 'other self', the id to her ego. Thundering steam trains and Rachmaninov stand for the irrepressible sexual urge. Stephen Lynn's flat, with its bachelor urbanity, contrasts cleverly with Laura's safe, staid home and safe, staid husband Fred ("I don't understand!") Alec's silent hand on Laura's shoulder is wonderfully poignant, the suppressed emotion eclipsed by stupid Dolly Messiter, her face filling the screen and 'wiping out' the great moment.

Sex has to be dealt with obliquely, but it is very much the driving-force of the film. "If we control ourselves, and behave like sensible human beings ..." offers Laura hopefully but hollowly. Neither man nor woman is capable of restraint, at least until after the climax in Stephen's flat. The boathouse and the little bridge hint furtively at sexual union. Other reviewers have declared the liaison to be 'unrequited' or 'unconsummated', but I am not so sure. In the grammar of 1940's cinema, the return to the love-nest of tousle-haired, hatless Laura is the equivalent, I would suggest, of our modern bedroom scene. Isn't that why Alec suddenly decides to take the job offer?