Brief Encounter is a revered classic, sometimes called the British Casablanca. I beg to differ. This is a well-constructed film with some nice performances and interesting things to say, but the romantic quality of the story has been blown way out of proportion. The film recounts a shallow infatuation involving two bored middleclass married types, badly in need of infusing their lives with a bit of thrill. Historically, the film's main importance is that it elevated the career of David Lean into the limelight, from which it never again receded.

Historical Background: David Lean (1908-1991) was one of Britain's greatest directors and is today best known for his sweeping historical epics, including The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965), Ryan's Daughter (1970), and A Passage to India (1984). His early films, however, were much smaller in scale and more intimate. My personal favorite among his chamber works is Hobson's Choice (1954). His first four directorial experiences all involved adaptations of plays by Noël Coward. The first, In Which We Serve (1942), was a war film that he co-directed with Coward. It gained Best Film recognition in 1942 from the New York Film Critics' Circle (NYFCC). Lean then solo directed three more adaptations of Coward plays of which Brief Encounter (1945) was the most successful, winning a Palme d'Or from Cannes. Brief Encounter is the story of a doomed romance, complicated by middleclass preoccupations with shame and guilt. It is interesting, in that context, that Lean himself grew up in a Quaker household that disdained films as "sinful." From his Quaker boarding schools, he snuck out to the local movie houses, much as a married man or woman might sneak out for an adulterous affair. Lean was so swept up in his romance with the cinema that he took jobs as a "tea boy," then a clapper, and later a messenger boy, just to be able to be a part of the film industry.

The Story: Most of the story is told as a flashback, after an opening scene that really represents the end of the story. After her torrid infatuation with Dr. Alec Harvey (Trevor Howard) comes to an end, at their meeting place in the coffee shop at the rail station, Laura Jesson (Celia Johnson) reluctantly heads home to her loving but bland husband Fred (Cyril Raymond) and their two children. After the children are in bed, as Fred works on his crossword puzzle, Laura recounts in her mind her recent intense affair.

It began by chance. Laura had caught a speck of soot in her eye as she stood on the platform awaiting her train. In the coffee shop, Dr. Harvey had come gallantly to her rescue, removing the speck with all the competence of a skilled physician. Later, the two had briefly crossed paths on the street. They feel an attraction to one another and soon the chance encounters are giving way to planned ones. Alec is married with two children as well. They go to the movies together but find themselves departing before the film has concluded, preferring to spend the time simply with one another. They take a ride in rowboat on a lake and later a trip to a beautiful country spot where an arched stone bridge spans a small stream. Thursdays become their regular day for meeting, either at the train station or outside the hospital where Alec works. They kiss passionately in the train station and on the bridge and Alec arranges for a rendezvous at a colleague's apartment. Laura initially refuses to go up to the apartment and even boards the train for home, but impulsively gets off at the last moment and joins Alec in front of a cozy fire. The early return of Alec's friend cuts that episode short, before the outcome becomes evident.

There's a bit of a subplot, within the coffee shop, involving the irascible woman behind the counter, Myrtle Bagot (Joyce Carey), and a cheeky conductor, Albert Godby (Stanley Holloway). A bit of flirtation between the two, at the beginning of the film, smoothly transitions into the pair spending nights together, with none of the angst so evident between Laura and Alec.

Throughout the four weeks or so that the affair progresses, both Laura and Alec are consumed by feelings of guilt and shame, but are also unable to resist their attraction to one another. Laura begs Alec for his help in ending the relationship and Alec takes that as reason enough to accept a job offer, for which he had been deferring his decision. It will take him and his family to Johannesburg in South Africa, out of harm's way. Their last few minutes together are spoiled when a blabbermouth busybody, Dolly Messiter (Everley Gregg), joins them, uninvited, at their table at the coffee shop. All Alec can do in the way of a fond farewell is briefly rest his hand on Laura's shoulder.

Themes: Brief Encounter is often cited as one of the great romantic love stories. One reviewer states that non-cynical viewers will "weep buckets." (Cynical ones will laugh torrents!) Another says that this movie proves that "the English can be as passionate as the rest of us." Apparently that viewer hasn't seen many French or Italian films. I'm as big a sucker for passion and romance as any other film lover, but, frankly, in my younger years, I had coffee breaks that were more romantic than what transpires between Laura and Alec. This film may prove that the middleclass English are as needy about feeling emotionally alive as middleclass people elsewhere, but it proves nothing about their capacity for genuine passionate romance.

Let's stop and consider the relationship that really existed between the Laura and Alec. Love is a complex thing made up of many different elements, so let's not be overly narrow in evaluating what they had, as a couple. Evidently, there was no sexual intimacy, although undoubtedly there were unfulfilled feelings of lust, particularly on his part. Those feelings of sexual desire might even have been consummated except for the untimely return of Alec's friend to the borrowed apartment. Modern audiences put perhaps too much emphasis on sexuality as a component of romance, so let's overlook that piece. Perhaps there's some deep intellectual rapport? Not much of that occurs between Alec and Laura either. Their conversation rarely extends beyond the topics of the trains, the weather, or what they are eating or drinking. Perhaps they have a long history of shared experience and the tender feelings that come with familiarity? No, clearly not. They've only spent a few short hours together during the most recent four or five weeks. Perhaps they've shared their most intimate feelings with one another and gotten to know the depths of each other's soul? Well, he articulated his passion for preventive medicine, but, as far as what was shown in the film, there were no other instances of intimate feelings being shared. What then was the basis for this supposedly intense romance? Seemingly just a few furtive, "meaningful" glances and mutual attraction to each other's countenance and body type.

It is telling that the story is told almost entirely by voiceover narrative, in Laura's voice specifically. What we learn about is what's happening inside her head, not a relationship between two people. No doubt, something more or less similar also happened inside Alec's head, but these are mainly just two people in love with the feeling of being in love, rather than in love with each other. Laura and Alec are each swept up in the thrill of infatuation, made all the more intense because the passionate feelings conflict with their overbearing middleclass sense of shame and guilt. Early on, Laura likens her feelings about Alec to those of a schoolgirl in the first throes of youthful infatuation. Later, she talks about her sense of danger. This is a woman who is tired of the dullness of her daily routine and staid married life. It is noteworthy that the name of the play on which this film was based was Still Life. Laura meets a man in a similar predicament and the two let their imaginations run wild. Suddenly, they are alive and delirious with emotion, but it's all dreadfully self-indulgent, self-important and melodramatic. Laura and Alec don't actually even know one another in any meaningful way. What each does know intimately is his or her own internal emotions. Confusion between the thrill of romance and genuine love must be terribly pervasive, considering how many filmgoers actually view this film as a love story.

I'm not a fan of guilt or shame. It's a pity to see Laura and Alec each consumed by self-loathing. I decided when I was still just a boy not to waste my time with such notions as guilt or shame, to the extent that I could avoid them. I do, however, respect commitment as the basis for most marriage relationships, especially when one has chosen to declare such a commitment as part of the marriage vows. Dishonesty and fabrication are the death-knells of a marriage. I have no moral objection to childless "open marriages," if it is by mutual choice, but my experience is that such marriages are doomed to fall apart, sooner or later. My belief, however, is that commitment to a marriage should not be founded on feelings of guilt or shame, but rather on a sense of joy in the value, beauty, and stability of such a relationship. One of Laura's problems was that she only wanted to honor her marriage vows out of a sense of guilt, not out of joy. One reviewer calls this film a conflict between "doing the right thing" and "personal happiness." That may accurately reflect Laura's dilemma, but it shouldn't have. There needs to be a sense of "personal happiness" that derives from honoring one's commitment to one's spouse. Otherwise, a marriage loses its joy. Instead of trying to control themselves, Alec and Laura needed to be throwing themselves passionately into their genuine love relationships, with their spouses and children. They could even responsibly pursue passionate relationships outside of their marriages, so long as those relationships did not violate the vows of sexual and romantic exclusivity they agreed to when they married.

Production Values: The screenplay for this film was based on a one-act play by Noël Coward entitled Still Life, from a group called collectively Tonight at 8:30. The play's length was about thirty minutes or so, but it was fleshed out to yield the 86-minute film. The script is very nicely constructed. There's the circular nature of the storytelling, beginning and ending with the same farewell scene in the train station coffee shop. We see the ending at the beginning, without truly understanding the significance of what's happening. By the time we return to the same scene at the film's end, it is fraught with significance. There's a nice mirroring of the main story with a flirtatious romance between a rail conductor, Albert, and the waitress, Myrtle, which provides a lower class contrast to the middleclass romance of the principals. There's also effective contrast between the middleclass dialog and the lower class dialog. Then there's some clever cinematic referencing when the central couple goes to the theater. There's some subtle sexual symbolism, as well, such as the arched bridge over a stream and the out-or-control rowboat banging into an obstruction.

There's a bit of a noir feel to the sublime black-and-white cinematography. I love the sterile train station as a backdrop for a film about romance. It's a nice, ironic touch. I suppose we could call this film a romance noir, if their were such a category. The Criterion digital transfer is truly luminous, as they state on the case. There's nice use of lighting by Lean and his cinematographer, Robert Krasker. There are some artsy mirror and window reflection images. I like the film's look except that the camera placements are very static, as is too often the case with adaptations of theater works. The soundtrack is rightfully famous, featuring Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto. It would have added nicely to the aura of passionate romance, had their been any such aura inherent in the story.

Performance-wise, Celia Johnson is the film's highlight. She's got big saucer-shaped eyes that are excellent for suggesting wonderment and disequilibrium. I like the fact that she wasn't done up in a lot of makeup or fancy outfits (except in one daydream sequence). She looked every bit the part of an ordinary housewife. She also has the kind of wistful voice that could lend the voiceover narrative the necessary sense of longing. Johnson was a regular in the early films of David Lean, appearing in In Which We Serve (1942) and This Happy Breed (1944). She also appeared in A Kid for Two Farthings (1955) and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969).

Trevor Howard seemed to me no better than a cookie-cutter kind of romantic lead. He struck me as an insincere seducer. I'm always suspicious of a man or woman who has to wheedle professions of love out of a partner rather than waiting for them to emerge spontaneously. He went on to roles in The Third Man (1949), Sons and Lovers (1960), Von Ryan's Express (1965), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968), Battle of Britain (1969), Ryan's Daughter (1970), Kidnapped (1971), Superman (1978), and Gandhi (1982). The supporting performances from Joyce Carey, Stanley Holloway, Cyril Raymond, and Everley Gregg were all excellent.

Bottom-Line: The extras included with the Criterion DVD are the original trailer (more subdued than the typical trailer) and a commentary track by film scholar Bruce Eder (informative but dry). Frankly, I expected more from this film. It won a Golden Palm from Cannes, though in a year when eleven were given. The film is more dated than just about any other I know, but I don't hold that against it. I'm used to responding to films in the context of their own times. The problem for me is that the so-called romance depicted here is of the shallowest variety and largely just a fabrication in the minds of the two participants. There's no real depth of feeling or understanding between them and not even much chemistry. When a film billed as a romance is not convincingly romantic, there's little else left to do other than to admire the technical qualities of the production.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good Date Movie
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older