Brief Encounter
Synopsis
"Sheer perfection - the gold standard of tragic romances whose influence can still be seen to this day" - Keith Ulhich, Time Out.
The joy of having member's choice for the classics season is when you pick such great films as this! We did think of having it ("One of cinema's classic love stories" - Kate Muir, Times) on Sunday as it was Valentines Day but there really were too many films to fit in the season; sorry.
David Lean wrote and directed 'Brief Encounter', taking it from the Noel Coward play 'Still Life'. It was his 5th film before he went on to direct so many other famous films such as 'Lawrence of Arabia', 'Doctor Zhivago' and 'A Passage to India'. It earned him the Grand Prize at Cannes and an Oscar nomination for Best Director.
The stars were Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard; "She is Laura: the good little housewife to a drab, inattentive middle-class worker bee, trudging through a repetitive, stultifying existence somewhere in suburbia. He is Alec: a doctor whose equally loveless union has driven him to find solace in work. Their chance meeting in a station café develops first into a casual friendship, then gradually, guiltily into something neither of them can fully understand or admit" - Tom Huddleston, Time Out. Look out for other faces too - Stanley Holloway, Joyce Carey and Cyril Raymond, who plays the "drab, inattentive worker bee" husband so well.
The encounter may be brief, but it is oh! so beautiful, oh! so...English!
The joy of having member's choice for the classics season is when you pick such great films as this! We did think of having it ("One of cinema's classic love stories" - Kate Muir, Times) on Sunday as it was Valentines Day but there really were too many films to fit in the season; sorry.
David Lean wrote and directed 'Brief Encounter', taking it from the Noel Coward play 'Still Life'. It was his 5th film before he went on to direct so many other famous films such as 'Lawrence of Arabia', 'Doctor Zhivago' and 'A Passage to India'. It earned him the Grand Prize at Cannes and an Oscar nomination for Best Director.
The stars were Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard; "She is Laura: the good little housewife to a drab, inattentive middle-class worker bee, trudging through a repetitive, stultifying existence somewhere in suburbia. He is Alec: a doctor whose equally loveless union has driven him to find solace in work. Their chance meeting in a station café develops first into a casual friendship, then gradually, guiltily into something neither of them can fully understand or admit" - Tom Huddleston, Time Out. Look out for other faces too - Stanley Holloway, Joyce Carey and Cyril Raymond, who plays the "drab, inattentive worker bee" husband so well.
The encounter may be brief, but it is oh! so beautiful, oh! so...English!
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