BRIEF ENCOUNTER (Dir. David Lean, 1945)
For a film that regularly features in polls of the greatest-ever British movies (at number 2 in the BFI-compiled Top 100 List), Brief Encounter can still generate mixed reactions from many film fans and critics. To some it is a stagey, stilted and dated period-piece, ripe for ridicule and easily lampooned: Victoria Wood’s parody is a particularly good example, although her affection for the film shines through this updating of the story. To others, this writer included, Brief Encounter is a masterpiece, artfully directed and edited by David Lean, perfectly cast, and beautifully acted. It is a tour de force of cinematic narrative, building a sense of place and atmosphere to create a world that the viewer can inhabit for the film’s duration, an absorption that produces that dull ache in the stomach and slight feeling of loss when a film (or book, or piece of music for that matter) that has really gripped you comes to an end.
The film is often described as typically English. Jeremy Paxman highlights this aspect in the introductory paragraphs of his book The English, where he seeks to identify the generally accepted characteristics of Englishness. He reels off a list of attributes--real or imagined-- of the English pysche which are also key themes of the film. These include a sense of duty, obligation and restraint, and the ability, perhaps even the predilection, to disavow emotion and passion in favour of doing 'the right thing.'
Such is the fate of the two main characters, Laura Jesson (Celia Johnson) and Dr. Alec Harvey (Trevor Howard). Both happily married to other people, their impromptu Thursday afternoon meetings at Milford Junction train station lead them to the brink of adultery. That they never consummate their affair is fundamental, not only to the romantic 'impossible love' storyline, but also to any reading of the film as a representation of what the English seem (or seemed) to want to tell themselves and the rest of the world about their supposed national characteristics. By their own volition, the protagonists refuse to allow their relationship to develop further, as thoughts of family responsibility and the impossible weight of guilt overpower the strength of their feelings for each other. Their love brings them very little joy and much misery, with Laura brought to the brink of throwing herself in front of a train.
The supposed English obsession with class and social status is represented in the story-lines of two contrasting couples: the respectable middle-class housewife and the debonair but earnest doctor (whose accents and manners, combined with their sense of propriety, conceal the passion that they truly feel for each other), and the working-class couple, the “cheeky chappie” railway porter (Stanley Holloway) and the pretentious refreshment room buffet manageress (Joyce Carey), whose earthier exchanges similarly disguise their mutual affection. Here, the film hints at class differences in morals and attitudes. As Carey’s character tells the waitress Beryl how she came to leave her husband, Laura and Alex eavesdrop with evident relish. Are we to take from this scene that there was one rule for the middle-class and quite another for the less complicated and restrained working-class?
Despite the relief provided by the comic scenes between Holloway and Carey there is a pervasive melancholy, not just in the plot itself, but also emphasised by the black-and-white cinematography and the drab routine of suburban respectability: Laura’s regular Thursday visits to Boots Lending Library to change her books, the mild escapism of an afternoon at the cinema, the return to domestic predictability and the homely but dull charm of her unemotional husband Fred, fixated on his newspaper crossword, hearth and home. To be English is to live in and be constrained by the English climate: Laura daydreams, whilst on the train, of being in Paris and Venice with Alec, and suggests that we would be different, less shy, if we lived in sunnier climes. There is also a feeling of loneliness: neither main character has a true friend in whom they can confide. The film’s message seems to be that no-one else would understand the affair, so it is best to say nothing.
Critics of the film may have a point in questioning the contemporary relevance of its depiction of the attitudes and values of a world that no longer exists, and probably never did. However, whether you are susceptible to its peculiarly English romantic melancholia or not, Brief Encounter endures through Lean’s masterful direction, classic story-telling and stunning use of music-- the film is unimaginable without Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2—and Celia Johnson’s performance in particular. Most of all, Brief Encounter offers the viewer something of what its leading characters experience: a taste of romance, a fleeting glimpse of escape, of another possible life.--Steve Cox
Copyright Steve Cox 2011.
Sources:
Brownlow, Kevin. David Lean: A Biography. Faber & Faber, 1997.
Fox, Kate. Watching The English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour. Holder & Stoughton, 2005.
Organ, Steven, ed. David Lean: Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers). University Press of Mississippi, 2009.
Paxman, Jeremy. The English: A Portrait of a People. Penguin Books, 1999.
