Brief Encounter

Directed by David Lean and based on a play called Still Life written by Noel Coward, Brief Encounter and it’s film adaptation, (co-written by Coward and Lean), was nominated for best Director and Screenplay at the Oscars in 1946. This wonderful movie follows a middle aged married woman named Laura Jesson, (Celia Johnson), who lives a comfortable, but boring and unhappy middle class life in pre-war London with her husband and two young children. When Laura goes out on her weekly day-trip into the city, she comes across a surgeon named Dr Alec Harvey (Trevor Howard), and within the space of an afternoon they go from being unknown acquaintances, into something a bit more serious, to say the least. Although Lean has one of the best filmographies of any filmmaker in cinematic history, In Which We Serve, Great Expectations, The Sound Barrier, Hobson’s Choice, Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia. This is my absolute favourite film of his. It takes what would’ve been a very brave story for the time, (although it would be deemed soppy and melodramatic if done today) and turns it into a masterfully crafted romance that’s almost entirely told in flashback form from Laura’s perspective and how a meagre afternoon with a complete stranger changes her life and way of thinking forever, most of this is done through Celia Johnson’s performance as Laura (who was also nominated for best actress), and is one of my all time favourite performances given by an actress, along with Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No.2 which is played throughout the film for a mixture of emotional effect and just sheer beauty. Which is what this film is in a nutshell, sheer beauty! From the performances of not just Johnson but the whole cast, to Robert Krasker’s lush cinematography to the entire production itself, which although set in West London was mostly filmed in Lancashire and Cumbria due to how difficult and quite frankly dangerous it would’ve been to film in London, due to blackouts and the fact that nearly everywhere would’ve been bomb damaged. (The film was shot a few months before V.E Day when WWII ended in Europe, [Though you can’t really tell the difference anyway]). This is the best romantic drama to come out of its generation and probably of all time. In the same way Citizen Kane is used as a prime example to describe how a great film is in general. The same analogy can be used to describe romance with Brief Encounter as the prime example of it’s genre.

10/10 – Calum Roberts