Brief Encounter (1945) movie review (2015) | Little White Lies

Brief Encounter (1945)

05 Nov 2015 / Released: 06 Nov 2015

Black and white image of two people - a woman in a coat and a man in a hat - standing close together in a doorway or window frame, looking at each other.
Black and white image of two people - a woman in a coat and a man in a hat - standing close together in a doorway or window frame, looking at each other.
5

Anticipation.

It’s <em>Brief Encounter</em> for god’s sake.

5

Enjoyment.

Perfect parts include: the script, the lead performances, the steam trains, the music, the supporting performances, those accents, the bloody Refreshment Room, the end, the beginning, the middle.

5

In Retrospect.

An irresistible romance with glorious old world values.

Rur­al train plat­forms were trans­formed for­ev­er by this high peak of screen romance from David Lean.

Brief Encounter is a majes­tic loco­mo­tive that steams deserved­ly among the immor­tals of cin­e­ma. For as long as peo­ple yearn for the incom­pat­i­ble goals of sta­ble monogamy and spon­ta­neous romance, David Lean’s black-and-white mas­ter­piece will be as vital as tracks to the trains that roar across them.

The plot and themes hard­ly need retrac­ing. Brief Encounter is a set text for any cinephile, homaged implic­it­ly in Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love, and explic­it­ly in Todd Haynes’ new film, Car­ol, which is book­end­ed with the same scene that book­ends Brief Encounter: two peo­ple that illic­it­ly love one anoth­er sit­ting in silence before an acquain­tance comes to shat­ter the moment with blithe yap­ping. Because the feel­ings of the silent cou­ple can­not be expressed with­in the code of civilised exchanges, one of them gets up and leaves, but not before deliv­er­ing a secret squeeze of the other’s shoulder.

Apart from ʻthis film remains per­fect and every­one should see it’, what is worth say­ing about this film 70 years on? Lau­ra (Celia John­son) the house­wife hero­ine, and Alec (Trevor Howard) the gal­lant doc­tor, both have cut-glass accents which dates the set­ting but not the dra­ma. The puri­ty of the sto­ry­telling is built to last. There is no devi­a­tion in Laura’s anguished nar­ra­tive from the chance meet­ings and the excit­ed feel­ings they con­jure, and then, the planned meet­ings and the invis­i­ble chasms they cre­ate in her fam­i­ly life.

The moral­i­ty is pure by con­trast with self- con­scious­ly mod­ern rela­tion­ship philoso­phies. Lau­ra and Alec know that cheat­ing on their spous­es would be wrong. Mutu­al com­pre­hen­sion of this fact informs the under­tow of ten­sion that grows in tan­dem with their ini­tial­ly polite feel­ings. If such a film were made today, Alec would be a rak­ish play­boy who seduces Lau­ra with his charis­mat­ic moral rel­a­tivism. Laura’s suf­fer­ing would take the form of an exis­ten­tial cri­sis over whether fideli­ty is a real­is­tic expec­ta­tion. The nature of moral­i­ty is not a ques­tion here. The issue is a juici­er, more earnest one: what to do with over­whelm­ing immoral urges?

So, Brief Encounter car­ries not just a jus­ti­fi­ably swooned-over depic­tion of love that can­not be, but a depic­tion of decen­cy that can­not be undone. We nev­er see Alec’s oth­er half, but Laura’s hus­band Fred (Cyril Ray­mond) is shown to be unflap­pable and kind­ly. Lau­ra ral­lies her­self into forced cheer for their inter­ac­tions. It’s no great leap to imag­ine her in days gone by and, per­haps days to come, buoyed by warm fam­i­ly com­forts. There is no ambi­gu­i­ty in his con­duct to mud­dy the def­i­n­i­tion of doing right and doing wrong by Fred and her kids.

The source of the mud­dy­ing is her desire for the ener­gy offered by a new man, a new love, a new raft of feel­ings, a new life. These are crav­ings that even the most bliss­ful­ly domes­ti­cat­ed among us occa­sion­al feel ris­ing up in our most defi­ant­ly roman­tic thoughts. But romance is not the same as good­ness. Brief Encounter holds this truth down in the ink of Noël Coward’s world­ly and well- man­nered script. Romance and good­ness are evoked with equal pow­er and from these con­flict­ing impuls­es, volup­tuous demons spring eternal.

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