Review of Brief Encounter (1945) by Eric O — 14 Sep 2011

Though David Lean is most often remembered for his enormous, grandiose epics from the 50s and 60s, he made some quiet pictures too; this one stands, for me, as just as much a work of perfect art as 'Lawrence of Arabia'.

It is based on a play and has confinements. These fences are set by the story's central character Laura Jesson (Celia Johnson) who narrates the film via a confession that she dictates toward her husband as an apology but, as the film goes on, it begins to seem more for herself.

This film is about a couple of essentially good people who do a bad thing, but it isn't about damning them. Instead, the story chooses to use the incident to look at the fragile human details that are choice, guilt, honesty and forgiveness, and within all of these subjects it poses fascinating questions.

Johnson is wonderfully human in her role, and her lover is played with a special kind of charm and boyishness by Trevor Howard. The two carry the film with their totally naturalistic love; all is told through their gestures, their glimpses, their eyes.

It would have been so easy for Lean to let the narration of his film to do the talking, as these kinds of movies often have a tendency to do; but he takes painstaking care to set that voiceover up as a wall, and then he challenges us to penetrate that wall and discover some real emotional truths behind it.