Brief Encounter
Directed by	David Lean
Produced by	Noel Coward Anthony Havelock-Allan Ronald Neame
Written by	Noel Coward Anthony Havelock-Allan David Lean Ronald Neame
Starring	Celia Johnson Trevor Howard Stanley Holloway Joyce Carey Cyril Raymond
Music by	Sergei Rachmaninov
Cinematography	Robert Krasker
Editing by	Jack Harris
Distributed by	-UK- Eagle-Lion Distributors (1945 Theatrical) Carlton Visual Entertainment (DVD) -USA- Universal Pictures (1946 Theatrical) MGM Home Entertainment (DVD)
Release date(s)	26 November, 1945 24 August, 1946
Running time	86 min
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Brief Encounter is a 1945 British film about the morals of British suburban life, centring on a housewife for whom real love (as opposed to the polite arrangement of her marriage) was an unexpectedly "violent" thing. It was directed by David Lean and stars Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard. The screenplay is by Noel Coward, and is based on his 1936 one-act play Still Life. The soundtrack prominently features the Piano Concerto No. 2 by Sergei Rachmaninoff, played by Eileen Joyce.

Synopsis

Laura Jesson (Johnson), a suburban housewife, tells her story in the first person while returning to home on the train to her husband. Bored with the security of her domestic life, Laura ventures into town once a week for shopping and a matinée movie.

On one of her weekly excursions, she encounters Alec Harvey (Howard) in the refreshment room of the railway station. Both are in early middle-age, married, and both have two children. The doctor is a general practitioner who also works one day a week as a consultant at the local hospital, but his passion is for preventive medicine, such as addressing the causes of respiratory illness in miners. Enjoying each another's company, the two arrange to meet weekly for tea in the refreshment room of the station while they await their trains home. They are soon troubled to find their innocent and casual relationship quickly developing into love.

For a while, they meet furtively in cafes and cinemas, constantly fearing chance meetings with friends. After several meetings, they go to a room belonging to a friend (Valentine Dyall) of the doctor, but they are interrupted by the friend's unexpected return. This exemplifies that a future together is impossible and, wishing not to hurt their families, they agree to part. The doctor is soon to leave for Africa.

Their final meeting at the station which we see for the second time with the poignant perspective of their story. As they await a sad and final parting, Dolly Messiter, a talkative friend of Laura, invites herself to join them and is soon chattering away, totally oblivious to the couple's inner misery.

As they realize that they have been robbed of the chance for a final goodbye, Alec's train arrives. With Dolly still chattering, Alec departs without a last look at Laura. As the train is heard pulling away, Laura suddenly dashes out onto the platform. The lights of the passing train flash across her face as she conquers her impulse to commit suicide; she then returns home to her family.

In a final scene, not appearing in the original Coward play, Laura's husband Fred suddenly shows that he had not been completely fooled by the glib lies she told him in the past weeks, and saying "thanks for coming back to me, dear" takes her in his arms - with the film thus ending on a tribute to the institutions of marriage and duty.

The film does not mention the Second World War or any of the hardships that accompany it. While no character refers to a specific time, the fictional film within a film Laura and Alec see, Flames of Passion, which is newly released, displays a copyright date of 1938. When Laura returns home following the first (and last) scene, her daughter wishes to see a pantomime, suggesting a time in the weeks before Christmas.

Adaptation

The film is based on Coward's one-act play Still Life (1936), one of a group of ten short plays entitled , designed for Gertrude Lawrence and Coward himself to be performed in various combinations as triple bills. All scenes of Still Life are set in the refreshment room of a railway station (the fictional Milford Junction).

As is normal in films based on stage plays, the film depicts places that are only referred to in the play: Dr. Lynn's flat, Laura's home, a cinema, a restaurant and a branch of Boots the Chemists. Additionally, a number of scenes have been added which are not in the play: a scene on a lake in a rowing boat where Dr. Harvey gets his feet wet; Laura wandering alone in the dark, sitting down on a park bench and smoking in public; a drive in the country in a borrowed car.

Some scenes are made less ambiguous and more dramatic in the film. The scene in which the two lovers are about to commit adultery is toned down: in the play it is left for the audience to decide whether they actually consummate their relationship. In in the film, Laura has only just arrived at Dr. Lynn's flat when the owner returns, and is immediately led out by Dr. Harvey via the fire escape. Later, when Laura wants to throw herself in front of an express train, the film makes this intention clear by means of voice-over narration.

There are two editions of Noel Coward's original screenplay for the film adaptation, both listed in the bibliography below.

Production

Much of the film version was shot at Carnforth railway station in Lancashire, then a junction on the London, Midland and Scottish Railway. As well as a busy station being necessary for the plot, it was located far enough away from London to avoid the blackout for film purposes, shooting taking place in early 1945 before the War had finished. Noel Coward makes the station announcements in the film. The station buffet was a studio recreation. Carnforth Station still retains many of the period features present at the time of filming and remains a place of pilgrimage for fans of the film.^[1] However, some of the urban scenes were shot in London or at Denham (not Beaconsfield, as is often said) near Denham Studios where the film was made.^[2]

Music

As well as the Rachmaninoff 2nd Piano Concerto which recurs throughout the film, there is a scene in a tea room where a salon orchestra plays the Spanish Dance No 5 (Bolero) by Moritz Moszkowski.

Awards and recognition

The film shared the 1946 Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. In 1999 it came 2nd in a British Film Institute poll of the top 100 British films. In 2004, the magazine Total Film named it the 44th greatest British film of all time. Derek Malcolm included the film in his 2000 column The Century of Films.

Criticism

In her book Noël Coward (1987), Frances Gray says that Brief Encounter is,

after the major comedies, the one work of Coward that almost everybody knows of and has probably seen; it has featured frequently on television and its viewing figures are invariably high. Its story is that of an unconsummated affair between two married people [....] Coward is keeping his lovers in check because he cannot handle the energies of a less inhibited love in a setting shorn of the wit and exotic flavour of his best comedies [....] To look at the script, shorn of David Lean's beautiful camera work, deprived of an audience who would automatically approve of the final sacrifice, is to find oneself asking awkward questions. A disastrous attempt in 1975 to remake the film in a more up-to-date setting, with Richard Burton and Sophia Loren as Alec and Laura, made this plain. (pp.64-67).

Gray acknowledges a common criticism of the play: why do the characters not consummate the affair? Gray argues that their problem is class consciousness: the working classes can act in a vulgar way, and the upper class can be silly; but the middle class is or at least considers itself the moral backbone of society - a notion whose validity Coward did not really want to question or jeopardize as they were Coward's principal audience).

However, Laura in her narration stresses that what holds her back is her horror at the thought of betraying her husband and her settled moral values, tempted although she is by the force of a love affair. Indeed, it is this very tension which has made the film such an enduring favourite and it rather misses the point to suggest that this is a weakness rather than its most important feature.

The values which Laura precariously, but ultimately successfully, cling to were widely shared and respected (if not always observed) at the time of the film's original setting (the status of a divorced woman, for example, remained sufficiently scandalous in the UK to cause the King to abdicate in 1936). Updating the story left those values behind and with them vanished the credibility of the plot, which may be why the remake could not compete.^[3]

The film is widely admired for the beauty of its black and white photography and the atmosphere created by the steam-age railway setting; both of which were particular to the original David Lean version.^[4]

Another reason for the film's continued admiration is the brilliant performances by the cast. Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard, Stanley Holloway, and Joyce Carey were excellent. The film was an amazing success in the UK and such a hit in the US that Celia Johnson was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actress.

The film was released amid the social and cultural context of the Second World War when 'brief encounters' were commonplace and women had far greater sexual and economic freedom than previously. In British National Cinema (1997), Sarah Street argues that "Brief Encounter thus articulated a range of feelings about infidelity which invited easy identification, whether it involved one's husband, lover children or country" (p. 55). In this context, feminist critics read the film as an attempt at stabilising relationships to return to the status quo. Meanwhile, in his 1993 BFI book on the film, Richard Dyer notes that owing to the rise of homosexual law reform, gay men also viewed the plight of the characters as comparable to their own social constraint in the formation and maintenance of relationships. Sean O'Connor considers the film to be an 'allegorical representation of forbidden love' informed by Noel Coward's experiences as a closeted homosexual (p. 157).

A made-for-TV version starring Richard Burton and Sophia Loren was made in 1974, and is - as noted above - generally considered inferior.

Bibliography (Including Screenplays)

• Coward, Noel. Brief Encounter: Screenplay. London: Lorrimer, 1984. ISBN 0-85647-098-8
• Coward, Noel. Brief Encounter: Screenplay. London: Faber and Faber, 1999. ISBN 0-571-19680-2
• Dyer, Richard. Brief Encounter. London: BFI, 1993. ISBN 0-85170-362-3
• O'Connor, Sean. Straight Acting: Popular Gay Drama from Wilde to Rattigan. London: Cassell, 1998. ISBN 0304328669
• Street, Sarah. British National Cinema. London: Routledge, 1997. ISBN 0-415-06736-7

See also

• Pneumoconiosis

References

External links

• Brief Encounter at the BFI's Screenonline. Full synopsis and film stills (and clips viewable from UK libraries).
• Criterion Collection essay by Adrian Turner
• Brief Encounter Tea Room at Wymondham railway station
• Alison Ireland's comparison of the film with the original Coward play
• Leninimports review and detailed account of how the film was made

David Lean
1940s	In Which We Serve (with Noel Coward) | This Happy Breed| Blithe Spirit| Brief Encounter| Great Expectations| Oliver Twist| The Passionate Friends
1950s	Madeleine | The Sound Barrier| Hobson's Choice| Summertime| The Bridge on the River Kwai
1960s	Lawrence of Arabia | Doctor Zhivago
1970s	Ryan's Daughter
1980s	A Passage to India
Television	(1979)