Review of Brief Encounter (1945) by Paul Z — 06 Jan 2009

The beauty of David Lean's Brief Encounter as a love story is its unprecedented and natural showcase of the process by which Celia Johnson actually falls in love with Trevor Howard. And it fits her character so deeply, as she is the critical type, an unassumingly feminine vessel of healing and servility, on whose shoulder you want to rest your head. She is a suburban English housewife who tells her story in voice over in the first person while at home with her husband, imagining that she is coming clean about her affair to him. The story begins as she hazards into the neighboring town for shopping and to the cinema for a matinée, by herself and generally content with that. Coming back from one of these weekly outings, at the station she gets a speck of gravel in her eye which is dabbed away by another passenger. Both are middle-aged, married, and have children. The other passenger, a doctor played by Trevor Howard, eventually divulges his enthusiasm for preventive medicine. Taking pleasure in each another's companionship, the two plan to meet again. They are soon worried to find their blameless and relaxed rapport swiftly growing into love.

Most love stories, especially now, portray the characters' falling in love as an incident that has propelled the story. Brief Encounter, one of the few love stories to march to a different tune, is only about the spark and deepening and situational turmoil of love, laying bare the definition of it, its lack of any commonsense safety net, its random context, its power to make two people feel idealistic about themselves and ultimately about the two extreme extents of emotion in which it can leave you. And for this, a film must draw out the most personal familiarity with it all of each actor, the writer and the director. It is an emboldening task.

Rachmaninoff's music emphasizes the uncontrollable feelings that put at risk the trustworthy tedium of the couple's otherwise normal romantic lives. The black-and-white cinematography, discernible by both stylishness and uncommon realism augments the story gradually with the most beautifully realistic tones and atmospheric Englishness.

Brief Encounter carries Noel Coward's tenderly and sensitively in depth and perceptive script to radiant life, extracting lyricism and poetry from the most, to all appearances, ordinary doing. Trevor Howard gives a distinct performance, and Dame Commander of the British Empire Celia Johnson realizes a heartbreakingly wise, even moving portrayal of complete self- possession.