People usually associate David Lean with "larger-than-life" film spectacles like The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago. However, the most beloved of all his films isn't among that group—it is Brief Encounter, a relatively cheap, black-and-white and seemingly unattractive 1945 melodrama about the most prosaic characters imaginable, set in the most prosaic surroundings, so different from the epic exotic locations and epic characters that turned David Lean into one of the 20th century's greatest film-makers.

The plot is based on the one-act play by Noël Coward, the famous English playwright who worked with David Lean on his early films, including this one. The protagonist is Laura Jesson (played by Celia Johnson), a typical English middle-class housewife who has two children, a dependable but boring husband Frank (played by Cyril Raymond) and a life routine that involves stopping at Milford Junction railway station every Thursday afternoon. One of those afternoons she gets a piece of coal in her eye and is immediately helped by Doctor Alec Harvey (played by Trevor Howard), a general practitioner who just happened to be at the station. The next week Laura again meets Harvey and the two of them gradually begin to spend time together—first at a restaurant, then at the cinema—until they finally confess their feelings to each other. But their romance is quashed even before it actually begins, because their families and deeply ingrained sense of duty prevent them from following their heart and doing the unimaginable.

Few films represent the entirety of their maker's talent as Brief Encounter does. In any other hands this film would have been a recipe for disaster—hardly anything happens, the end is telegraphed at the very beginning, the sets are unappealing and the doomed couple in this film is not played by actors whom a modern audience would associate with stardom. But Lean manages to overcome those obstacles by employing many interesting film-making techniques and relying on the talents of his cast and crew. Black-and-white photography by Robert Krasker and Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto create a powerful atmosphere, while Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard—people who don't look like they are in the prime of their lives—look quite believable as lovers. Celia Johnson is especially convincing in her role, which is quite demanding, since it requires her to play a loving mother, a woman struck both by a schoolgirl-like crush and deep feelings of remorse and despair. Lean also relies on a good cast of character actors, especially Stanley Holloway and Joyce Carey in memorable performances as working-class people who have their own, much funnier and healthier romance.

Another ingredient to the story is Lean's introduction of "Flames of Passion"—a romantic film which Harvey and Laura watch in the theatre. That melodrama, glimpsed through the preview, is everything Brief Encounter is not—set in exotic locations, with stars, and not particularly good. Ironically, the words used in the trailer—"stupendous", "colossal", "gigantic" and "epoch-making"—would later become part of the vocabulary for any critic describing David Lean's films.

The romance in Brief Encounter is not only different from most other film romances in its exterior; it is different because it shows real adults with real problems instead of teenagers in adult costumes. The lovers in this film are faced with a terrible dilemma—they recognise their feelings but they are also more than aware of their social responsibilities. On one hand there is short-term bliss followed by risks and uncertainties that people of a certain age aren't exactly comfortable with; on the other hand, there is routine and safety, but also the nagging feeling that the same passion would never be felt for the rest of their lives. It isn't surprising that the most loyal audience for this film could be found among older viewers, those with an age and experience similar to the protagonists.

Additional value of Brief Encounter could be found in the way it portrays British (and for that matter, any other European) society sixty or seventy years ago. The moral values of that time might seem quite alien to many modern viewers, especially those who grew up in the post-Cold War era of instant self-gratification. People in this film are divided by invisible social lines; in the case of Britain, class is revealed not only through external expressions of material wealth or morals (looser at lower levels of society), but also through language. People who belong to the middle class spend incredible amounts of energy in order to keep up appearances and adhere to unwritten codes of social conduct, all in the name of an imaginary social order. Anything that would destroy such order is strictly prohibited and things like divorce are indistinguishable from scandal; people are conditioned to sacrifice their personal happiness for the greater good of society; the recent experience of the Second World War only strengthened such sentiments.

Lean, in order to make Brief Encounter as convincing and closer to real life as possible, portrayed the events from the perspective of Laura. This allowed even the modern audience to sympathise with her decision; perhaps Harvey, whom we see only in brief moments, isn't such a nice guy after all. Such speculations are quashed by Lean's decision to give a brief glimpse into the affair from Harvey's perspective, in a brief confrontation with his friend Stephen Lynn. This episode, which the film could easily have been without, not only tears the otherwise perfect structure of the film, but also leads to all kinds of rather trivial speculations about the real nature of Harvey's relation with Lynn. That scene is the reason why Brief Encounter is a great film, but not a masterpiece in the same rank with Lean's later works.

RATING: 8/10 (+++)

(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.movies.reviews on August 13th 2003)

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Movie URL: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/851-brief-encounter
Critic: AA