The Age of Commercialism

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

best movie i've ever seen.

The acting in this movie is really good.

Irrevocably putting UK maestro David Lean on the international map of a rising future cinematic titan, continuing his auspicious collaborations with famed playwright Noël Coward, BRIEF ENCOUNTER has surmounted itself at the apogee of film romanticism ever since. Based on Coward's one-act play, it is a garden-variaty extramarital affair between Laura Jesson (Johnson), a middle-class housewife and Alec Harvey (Howard), a married doctor. The film starts in the refreshment tea room of Milford Junction Station, a recurring place where they part ways after their weekly assignations, which also bookends from their first chance meeting to the ultimate farewell, but Lean cunningly leaves them in the periphery of his frame in the opening introduction, the initial perspective is of a gabby interloper Ms. Dolly Messiter (Gregg), an acquaintance of Laura, with whom she shares the same train route. Ms. Messiter's intrusion noticeably throws the pair for a loop, but Alec manages to retain his courtesy until his train arrives, and leaves Laura in an almost catatonic state, even the obtuse Ms. Messiter can tell there is something amiss about her, only if she would know, she has inconveniently obtruded herself into their last goodbye. After returning to her suburban residence, the voiceover of a distraught Laura begins to enunciate their weekly encounters from stem to stern, at once mundanely amicable and irresistibly intimate. Hence, the story is exclusively told from Laura's viewpoint, and Celia Johnson's extraordinary performance is nonpareil in its acute caliber and immense empathy, it sweeps all over you like a cataract ever since the very first gaze she projects in a close-up, which is so galvanizing that we are rapt in anticipation of its seething undertow's unfolding, and she pampers us with the full treatment, playing out against a cordial and debonair Trevor Howard, who has his own challenge to live up to Johnson's standard in less ample allotment in terms of screen time and backstory, and leaves a sterling impression as an idealist, upstanding, charming man, makes for an emphatically conflicted dyad with Johnson enmeshed in the moral quagmire, and together they elevate the material onto a situationist slant that entirely shucking off their personal liabilities from homily: it can happen to anyone, and when it happens, no one can afford an easy escape, more pertinently, in Laura's imaginative vignettes, Lean's film rams home that this luxury of living one's dreamed life is an everyday illusion that individuality is practically irrelevant, an inevitable temptation those who encounter must cope with wisely, touch wood! Plumping for Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto as the film's thematic signifier, Mr. Lean also constructs every shot with fluid nicety and supreme lighting in sharpening the focus on its romantic mythos and the characters' torrid inscape, and cleanses any blemish of vulgarity from the seemingly indiscreet situation, this is a film very close to perfection by this reviewer's lights, and hopefully yours too.

First of all, I love Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto Number 2 and the sight of express trains rolling through empty stations in 1945, so what could possibly go wrong here? Unfortunately, at some point during this viewing, I realized that my interest in the relationship of the two lead characters, played by Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard, two very capable actors, could not be sustained for very long. Caution, dear reader, because I am not much of a love story fan, but at least this one featured Rachmaninoff's beautiful music throughout and those speeding express trains.Just when the action was becoming rather dull, enter Joyce Carey and Stanley Holloway as two very amusing train station employees. Do you remember Stanley as Alfred P. Doolittle, Eliza's colorful father, in "My Fair Lady", who knocked our socks off during his unforgettable "Get Me to the Church on Time"? I've got to see more movies with this guy!The best part was that whenever I stream "tcm on demand", I can skip the likes of Alec Baldwin and that bearded wonder, Grandpa Dave Letterman, pontificating so self importantly about classic motion pictures, a subject in which they both somehow believe they have expertise. Really now.

Classic films are classic films for a reason. People fall in love with a character, or a story, or both, and return to it again and again. 'Brief Encounter' is one of those films that truly deserves the label of classic.It's full of lovely, memorable moments, and sections of dialogue. It also boasts two wonderful performances from the two leads, whose characters we root for when perhaps we shouldn't.I think that many years from now people will still be finding and watching this film, and for good reason. It's a classic part of British cinema.

Director David Lean earned the first Academy recognition for his career when he received a Best Director Oscar nomination, and a Screenplay Writing nomination he shared with Anthony Havelock-Allan and Ronald Neame, for this essential romance drama starring Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard. Johnson received her only Oscar recognition, a Best Actress nomination, for her role as a British housewife in an unexciting marriage such that a "brief encounter" leads to an affair (or does it?). Noel Coward wrote a play called "Still Life", which was the uncredited idea for the film's story.While sitting in her living room with her dependable, yet dull husband Fred (Cyril Raymond) and fumbling with her cross-stitch, Laura Jesson (Johnson) thinks about her relationship with Dr. Alec Harvey (Howard), a man with whom she'd had a chance meeting at a railway station when she'd gone into town. She remembers a great deal of detail, including the characters in the station's coffee shop like the station master Albert Godby (Stanley Holloway), who flirts incessantly with Myrtle (Joyce Carey), the hostess-waitress behind the counter. As if by fate, they meet again and Laura's relationship with Alec, who's also married, grows to the point that they plan to consummate it with a physical encounter at one of his friend's apartment.The film's story is really about what constitutes an affair and at what point is a wife being unfaithful to her husband. Laura contemplates all of this including whether or not to go through with the clandestine meeting. Naturally, there are some bumps and/or other circumstances along the way which make both parties think through their plans and their decisions, making sure that it's a conscience act versus one that just falls together easily.An intricately written and directed drama, against the backdrop of trying, fateful times (World War II) which deserves its high rating.