David Lean’s Brief Encounter (1945), Based on a Noël Coward’s Play: Film Review

I won’t spoil the details of the story for you. I’ll just say that it’s about a romance between a married housewife (Laura Jesson, played by Celia Johnson) and a married doctor (Alec Harvey, played by Trevor Howard) that grows out of “brief encounters” at a railway station and in the countryside.

In terms of film technique, the direction and choice of symbols here are truly wonderful, even as they are rather clichéd by now in cinema: steam trains puffing out of the train station and intense, dramatic music (Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2) for sexual passion; the lying other seen in a mirror; Laura’s interest in Rachmaninoff, which suggests she was more than a colorless, sedate housewife; the text frames in the films they see at the cinema, reading “Flames of Passion” in blaring letters; the lightning that brings out, subtly or forcefully, Laura’s emotions; the lackluster backdrop of a railway station that fits the story of repressed emotion; the stir around the counter in the refreshment area (manned by Myrtle Bagot as Joyce Carey), where, in the manner of literature and films on social class manners there’s a foil to the main romance; dark, rainy streets that echo the mood of the story . . . all this makes for memorable cinema.

The film wasn’t especially successful when it was released. Director David Lean attributed this to not having used star actors. David Lean and the producers, however, couldn’t have been more happy with Celia Johnson and Alec Harvey. While not particularly beautiful, Celia Johnson, 37 at the time, is terribly expressive. Indeed, I will watch the movie again only to see her act. (Then again to pay increased attention to the lighting, which I have really enjoyed.) Trevor Howard, as Dr. Alec Harvey, 32 at the time, was not very known at all, having only one credited movie role to his name. He’s not especially handsome either, but performs his part beautifully. I believe the film was so much more powerful for David Lean’s choice of these two actors. Star charisma would have added glamour that I think would have ruined the movie, which is an intimate, realistic drama about two ordinary people.

But back to emotion and reason, I feel they are equally important in both Laura’s and Alec’s lives, drawing them together and pulling them apart, and affecting their romance in a way that moves the affair beyond the plane of middle-class values and expectations to that of a poignant and important struggle between these two driving forces of our actions. Speaking of poignant, there’s so much power in their parting scene, in that last gesture between them.

Also powerfully affecting the reception of this film is, I think, the way Laura expresses herself in the voice-over. She says things like “so utterly humiliated and defeated, and so dreadfully, dreadfully ashamed," which is middle-class British English way to cope with feelings outside the bounds of decorum. It makes for quite an experience!

Do watch this movie! It’s a gem.