Brief Encounter

BRIEF ENCOUNTER
David Lean (1945)

A brief encounter that made a lasting impression. David Lean’s masterpiece has aged well and even today, over 60 years after its first release, it stands out as one of the greatest British films ever made.

A man and a woman meet in the café of a train station. They meet again by chance and again on purpose. Too late to fight it they realise that they have fallen in love. However both of them are married and their love is destined to cause grief. To assure us of this the film begins at its end. Dr Alec Harvey (Trevor Howard) will go to Africa and Laura Jessop (Celia Johnson) will return home. Sitting opposite her husband (Cyril Raymond) in the living room, Laura tells him the story of her adultery, but only in her mind.

The love story is not driven by passion but by repression. Both lovers battle with their conscience constantly, unable to give up this sudden source of happiness and sense of self in a life determined by routine. Their spaces are confined, a small café, a tunnel from one platform to another or a crowded cinema. Their surroundings enforce the temporality of their bond. They might wait for a train together, but ultimately their trains go in opposite directions. The antagonists are not the husband or wife of the lovers, but time itself which is constantly running out, and the strict rules of being middle-class. While the inner struggle is expressed through the raging sound of a Rachmaninov piano concerto, the self-restraint becomes unbearable to watch. The camera is static, often lingering on Celia Johnson’s big eyes, while the mise-en-scene is as well composed as the film’s characters. Only when Laura finally loses her composure in a moment of, literally, heartbreaking despair, does the camera seem to trip over, giving the viewer a sensation of vertigo.

Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard are absolutely marvellous in their subdued performances, communicating mostly though their eyes, and when Trevor Howard says “I love you”, it is much more than a phrase, he means it.
Noel Coward and David Lean are of course by now household names in British film history and this film proves, as many others do, why. With great respect for the characters, love comes to life on the screen. Few would have been able to tell a story of adultery in such a non-judgemental, heart rendering, yet by no means clichéd way.