Brief Encounter (1945) is a British film directed by David Lean starring Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard.

A screenplay was written by Noel Coward based on his play "Still Life" (1936), one of a class action of decade short plays entitled Tonight at 8:30, designed to be performed within various combinations of trinity (triple bills) when vehicles for Gertrude Lawrence and Coward himself. Tons scenes of "Still Life" come placed in a refreshment room of the railroad station (the fictitious Milford Junction).

A film version conspicuously features the Piano Concerto No. 2 by Sergei Rachmaninoff on the soundtrack. Tremendously of the film version was shot at Carnforth in Lancashire. Noel Coward makes a station announcements in the film.

It shared a 1946 ''Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) at the Cannes Film Festival. Withwithin 1999 it come 2d in the BFI poll of British films, while around 2004 the magazine Total Film'' named it the 44th greatest British film ever.

Synopsis
two successfully married humans, each big, both middle-class, meet by risk at the occupy train station. Laura Jessin universally goes into town on Thursdays to last concidering or even go to books to the library & borrow occasionally fresh ones. Dr. Alec Harvey occurs as gp world health organizatiin, on Thursdays, has his practice closed when he regularly substitute at the hospital for Dr. Stephen Lynn, the colleague & friend of his.

Laurthe & Alec meet first while he assists her dislodge a piece of grit from either her eye. Their perfectly harmless meetings one of these days transform into the romance, which it keep secret from either everyone else. When it keep close at hand there are no more place to last, it intend to fuck at Dr. Lynn's flat. However Dr. Lynn comes page early from either London & catches the babies together around his flat. Laurthe feels rather a inexpensive tart, & it becomes clear for both of the two that it have had to give each more higher. Dr. Harvey, world health organization has been offered a job within South Africa, okay, leaps at the risk. Their final meeting, once again in the refreshment room in which it saw every more first, is spoiled per arrival of Dolly Messiter, the distant friend of Laura's, world health organization keeps talking & clinging to the children then that no way for the babies to say serious-auf wiedersehen to every more properly. Arriving personal, Laura relives a affair inside her memory & is comforted by her hubby.

Comparison with the play
When is quite common sustaining films according to stage plays, a film shows virtually all of the site which are then exclusively talked just about in the play: Dr. Lynn's flat, Laura's personal, the cinemthe, a eating house, Boots. inside additiin, the total of scenes develop been added which are then non mentioned in the play: the scene on water in the rowing boat in which Dr. Harvey gets his feet needing changed; Laurthe mobile astir alone inside the dark, sitting down in the park bench & smoking publically; the cause in the united states in a borrowed car.

Certain scenes come manufactured less ambiguous & additional spectacular in the film: The "explicit" scene in which them lovers come astir to commit fornication is toned down. In the play these are left for even the audience to decide whether it actually know or non. In the film, Laura has exclusively upright make Dr. Lynn's flat once its creator fall into place, & she is immediately led retired by Dr. Harvey via a fire escape. When Laura wants to throw herself ahead of an express train, a film confirms her intention by means of voice-over narration, but "she fails to take the Karenina way out and walks back to the buffet" (Frances Gray).

A film utilizes narrative techniques such as frame stories and voice-over: the ending of a story is correct at the beginning of the pic, which is so repeated at the prevent; & there exists voice-all over by having Laura addressing her hubby, or even surreal Laura imagining addressing her hubby, around a dream-like state.

Criticism
Around her book Noël Coward (Macmillan, 1987), Frances Gray says that Brief Encounter is, "after the major comedies, the one work of Coward that almost everybody knows of and has probably seen; it has featured frequently on television and its viewing figures are invariably high. Its story is that of an unconsummated [sic!] affair between two married people. [...]

"Coward is keeping his lovers under control because he can't address the energies of the less inhibited love within a setting shorn of the wit & exotic flavour of his better comedies. [...] To view a script, shorn of David Lean's beautiful camera act, deprived of an audience world health organization would automatically approve of the final sacrifice, is to find request awkward questions. The fateful attempt around 1975 to remake the film in the extra higher-to-date setting, by owning Richard Burton and Sophia Loren as Alec and Laura, processed this plain." [pp.64-67] Gray's main argument: Why don't they just go ahead and do it? Why do they feel guilty, watched and hunted all the time? They do not seem to be particularly religious, so what's the problem? For Gray, it is a problem of class consciousness: The working classes can be and also act vulgar, and the upper class silly; but the middle class is or at least considers itself the moral backbone of society (and also has always been Coward's main audience!)--a notion whose validity Coward did not really want to question or jeopardize.

However, Laura (from whose point of view the film is told) makes it clear that what holds her back is her horror at the thought of betraying her husband and her settled moral values, tempted although she is by the force of the love affair. Indeed, it is this very tension which has made the film such an enduring favourite and it rather misses the point to suggest that this is a weakness rather than its most important feature.

The values which Laura precariously, but ultimately successfully, clings to were widely shared and respected (if not always observed) at the time of the film's original setting (the status of a divorced woman, for example, remained sufficiently scandalous in the UK to cause the King to abdicate in 1936). Updating the story left those values behind and with them vanished the credibility of the plot. That may be why the re-make could not compete. But the film is also widely admired for the beauty of its black and white photography and the atmosphere created by the late steam-age railway setting; both of which were particular to the original David Lean version.