The Golden Oldie? (Brief Encounter (DVD))

Member Name: aefra

Product:	Brief Encounter (DVD)
Date:	02/07/03 (197 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: British movie making at its best

Disadvantages: **

Why should a black and white movie produced in 1946 on a Lancashire railway station be perceived still as Britain's favourite film? But then why should our memory of Ingrid Bergman be from Casablanca, despite the more glamourous parts she played? The answer has to be that rare indefinable magic which creates a classic film which will be rediscovered again and again, then left in the memories of successive generations. Even Noel Coward ( In Which we Serve, Blythe Spirit) could not have imagined how his screenplay would endure.

Laura Jesson (Celia Johnson) a middle class housewife returning from her weekly shopping trip, waits for the train home in the refreshment room of Milford Station. When a piece of grits flies into her eye she is assisted by Alec Harvey (Trevor Howard), a doctor also on his way home. This, their first meeting, is no more than a gentlemanly gesture and polite thanks from Laura before he catches his train.

This innocent beginning and subsequent meetings, the first of them accidental, is told by Laura in a silent confession to her husband (Cyril Raymond) as he sits quietly and unaware completing the Times crossword during a quiet evening. With the strains of Rachmaninov's 2nd piano concerto in the background, Laura relives the events of the past 7 weeks. Told in flashbacks as Laura narrates, we watch her friendship with Alec, also happily married, develop into a deep and passionate love affair.

Although set prior to WW2, this film is not for me dated. Rather it is historical and moves in a time when society was unaware that its confined moral expectations were about to change forever. This is a love between a settled middle class couple approaching middle age whose innate beliefs and values were about to be potentially torn apart. In this era Laura and Alec would have regarded a liaison outside of marriage as rather messy, indeed squalid. Yet the very foundations of their ordinary daily
lives were about to be rocked by the bewildering joy of a deep love for each other.

Described often as a weepy, this is not the sacharine offering of such as Love Story. Perhaps it is the perfect partnership of Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard, together with their restrained performances, which lifted Noel Coward's original short play to the enduring prominence it reached in cinema history.

Laura meets Alec by happy coincidence a couple of weeks running and finds herself hoping the following Thursday to see him again. In anticipation she feels light hearted, "I suddenly felt reckless and gay"; and when Alec uses their previous acquaintance to ask if he may share her table in a crowded restaurant, they begin to tell each other of themselves and their lives. After permitting him to accompany her to the afternoon cinema the die is cast.

This is a story of two ordinary people to whom an extra-marital relationship would bring great happiness and equally, for Laura, misery as she dwells upon her infidelity. I shall not tell you if the lovers consummate their passion or the ending of the film. I can tell you though that such is the enduring impact of Brief Encounter that Carnforth station, used as the location - filmed at night after the trains had stopped running - is still a draw for tourists from all over the world, many of them young. Indeed a recent tv programme was devoted to this small town and informed us that the tearoom and original station were being reconstructed in the mode of the Brief Encounter period including the original station clock.

The locations of Brief Encounter are few and include scenes on the platform and in the tea room of Milford (Carnforth) Station. Here we meet the station attendant, Albert (Stanley Holloway) and Myrtle the tea lady (Joyce Carey). These once popular actors add humour and their down to earth speech and manners accentuate those of our hero and heroine. Th
eir cheeky banter running in the background of our story is life going on around that of our lovers but is also integral to the tale.

Director David Lean (Lawrence of Arabia, Bridge Over the River Kwai, Ryan's Daughter), Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard are no longer with us. Yet Brief Encounter will prevent them being forgotten. I still take the opportunity of seeing it again when on tv. The video, lasting 80 minutes, may be bought from Amazon for £9.89 and I have seen it in Blockbusters. Indeed, coincidentally, it is paired with Casablanca by Amazon, although I was not aware of this until I had written my review.


Note. A new version of Brief Encounter was produced in 1974. I am informed that this should be avoided.

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