Cast: Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard

Director: David Lean

Screenplay: Noel Coward

Genre: Romance/Drama

Running time: 1 hr 37 mins



CRITIQUE:


To call BRIEF ENCOUNTER as David Lean’s most affecting film is arguable, but to call it one of the best British love story ever told is only just. And love story it is, of tainted reveries, of shattering emotions and heartbreaking reality, BRIEF ENCOUNTER not only tells a story of a love-that-cannot-be but it also resonates to the morality of our modern times.


Here is a tale of a housewife, beginning at the story’s end and told in lonesome flashbacks, who narrates her encounter with a stranger on a railway station during her daily episodes of town-strolling and cinema-viewing. Laura (a subtle, nuanced performance by Celia Johnson), in her cut-glass, clipped English accent, doesn’t sigh and groan during her reminiscences in her mind but speaks in heartbreaking honesty, like a confession that comes straight from the heart. Her domicile belonging and strict middle-class upbringing tells her to eschew the forbidden love she had found, with an erudite practitioner Dr Alec Harvey (Trevor Howard) – who happens to be also married. Yet this story is bound to end the way it is supposed to end, albeit one could tell they are soulmates, but social and moral issues lies in its undercurrents. The removing of a grit out of someone’s eye turns into a secret love affair that does not go beyond a kiss, which in turns transforms into a sensible yet heart-shattering story.


David Lean, whose masterpieces include LAWRENCE OF ARABIA and DOCTOR ZHIVAGO, shot this film in the most starkly beautiful black-and-white and one of the best in its time. He directed this with grace and such moving poetry, and its dialogues are written as though with the most perfect lines in a poem. One can’t just help to believe in its compelling power that love is not always selfish – it can noble.


VERDICT:

An exquisite piece of cinema. You come out besotted and heartbroken, and most importantly, you distinguish it as a true classic. Your parents (and grandparents) will cry rivers, and so do you.



RATING: A+