Brief Encounter (1945) Review

"Brief Encounter" reviews

Movie

Brief Encounter

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2007-08-03 14:40:22

Provider

MRIB

Review

1945 film Brief Encounter is one of the mainstays of British cinema and is reissued as part of Park Circus's 'Classic Film For Digital Cinema' series.

While it doesn't always translate well to today, largely because its examination of fidelity rests largely on a very hidebound middle class morality, it's a film that now works as old fashioned escapism.

Celia Johnson is Laura, a married woman who meets an equally married man, Alex (Trevor Howard), in a railway station waiting room. Their immediate friendship quickly develops into something more serious, and both worry hugely about the impact of their adulterous intentions on their own marriages. So far, so fair. Noel Coward's play. Still Life, forms the basis of the story and the characters all speak in those clipped BBC English tones that scarcely exist any longer outside of American tourists' imaginations.

Middle class values are central to the film, which contrasts the uptight attitudes of its two main characters with that of the station workers who happily flirt with each other.

Laura and Alex worry as much about the social stigma of adultery as the moral consequences. As the film moves towards its inevitably tragic conclusion, the modern viewer is left reflecting on the fact that they don't make 'em like that any more.

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