There's No Love Like Doomed Love

Brief Encounter (1945) – A bored housewife, and a local doctor meet by
chance in a train station. Each lead conventional but dull lives. In
their fleeting moments together each Thursday, they find an
excitement that brings a thrill, but may also destroy them.

Director
David Lean                                                          Starring Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard

Why
I Liked It – A tightly told story that brings the right note of
breathlessness to a doomed romance.

Filmed
right as the Second World War ended, “Brief Encounter” is filled
with the feelings of uncertainty and longing that are often noted in
the post-war period. Neither Laura (Johnson) nor Alec (Howard) are
particularly unhappy in their lives. At the same time, happiness
doesn’t overwhelm their feelings, either. Life is routine, and a
little dull. We never see Alec’s wife and children, but Laura has
two perfect, normal children (Margaret and Bobbie), and a pleasant
husband (Fred). Fred is a nice man, who is emotionally neutral. He is
happy in the life that surrounds him. It demands little of him and he
reciprocates. Laura isn’t neglected, but neither is she prized. So
after meeting a charming doctor by chance one day, his attention
flatters her. What results is the textbook definition of a “doomed
romance.”

The
movie has lots going for it. Based on a Noel Coward play “Still
Life”, he adapted it for the screen, and also produced it. David
Lean has a touch with his movies that makes them great. Unlike most
of his best known work (“Lawrence of Arabia”, “The Bridge on
the River Kwai”, “Doctor Zhivago”), this isn’t an epic. It is
the exact opposite, in fact. A small, intimate movie with two primary
characters, and perhaps a dozen more. This is Laura and Alec’s
story, told as a flashback confession from her point of view. It’s
heartbreaking when she acknowledges that the one person who she could
share all this with, is the one person who must never know.

Add
in two veteran actors in the leads and you’re set. This was
Howard’s third movie in a career that would amass 117 credits.
Johnson is less known on this side of the Atlantic, but was a
successful actress in England. She renders Laura as an innocent,
while Howard makes the doctor a man swept away but an unfamiliar
passion. My modern skepticism found the idea of them falling “deeply
in love” in a very short time in a few hours each week a bit hard
to swallow, but 1945 was a more innocent time.

I
will note two odd notes that struck me. The first has to do with
Celia Johnson’s face. Through all the movie’s I’ve watched over
the years, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a face that changes so
much by the camera angle. Straight on, I found her face a little odd.
Short, with a wide forehead tapering to a pointed chin. An almost a
triangular face, dominated her enormous eyes. But as the camera moves
around her, all those things change. Her face seems to lengthen, her
eyes become less huge. It was the oddest sensation.

The
other thing to note is that, viewed from a 21st Century point of
view, Dr. Alec Harvey is a bit of a manipulator. He declares his love
and pushes Laura to reply likewise. He suggests taking her away from
her routine, he suggests a liaison in a professional friends empty
apartment despite her repeated refusals. I won’t say that it ever
pushes into the realm of an abusive relationship. In the social
structure of the day, he was “being the man” and therefore the
motive force in the romance. Looking at it through today’s lens, it
was borderline creeper behavior.

Despite
all that, “Brief Encounter” is a wonderful, if slightly archaic,
story. Great script, director and actors will rarely lead you wrong.

Rating
– **** Recommended.