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A story of the most precious moments in a woman's life!
Returning home from a shopping trip to a nearby town, bored suburban housewife Laura Jesson is thrown by happenstance into an acquaintance with virtuous doctor Alec Harvey. Their casual friendship soon develops during their weekly visits into something more emotionally fulfilling than either expected, and they must wrestle with the potential havoc their deepening relationship would have on their lives and the lives of those they love.
badelf
Feb 12, 2026 · via TMDB
Brief Encounter (1945) Directed by David Lean David Lean's Brief Encounter tells the story of two married people (Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard) who meet by chance at a railway station and fall into a brief, impossible love affair. The acting is incredible, both leads conveying volumes through restraint and glances. Lean's direction is assured, understanding exactly how to frame repressed emotion and stolen moments. The cinematography is phenomenal. The lighting and shadows really raised the experience of the film several notches, turning ordinary railway stations and tea rooms into spaces of longing and moral anguish. Every frame is composed with care, the visual language doing as much work as the dialogue. Too bad the screenplay doesn't age well into current culture. What felt like profound moral conflict in 1945, the agony of choosing duty over desire, now reads as needlessly repressed, the tragedy of two people unable to claim what they want because propriety demands sacrifice. We've moved past the idea that adultery of the heart requires this level of self-flagellation, that wanting something beyond your marriage means you must suffer eternally for the transgression of feeling. Still, as a technical achievement and a document of its time, Brief Encounter remains worth watching. Just don't expect the emotional stakes to land the way Lean intended.
CinemaSerf
Mar 28, 2022 · via TMDB
Based on Noël Coward's play "Still Life" this is a super adaptation from David Lean as Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard meet in a railway station café and 90 minutes later we have been on a roller-coaster of emotions, all delicately and subtly discussed, as these two eminently middle class English people challenge their long established "civilised" values and conventions of behaviour. It's style is it's simplicity - the script is poignant and charming; if a little dated now. Stanley Holloway provides an occasional breath of air during this quite intense drama, and who can ever forget that Rachmaninoff is a huge star of this, too?
User reviews courtesy of TMDB.
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Celia Johnson
Laura Jesson
Trevor Howard
Dr. Alec Harvey
Stanley Holloway
Albert Godby
Joyce Carey
Myrtle Bagot
Cyril Raymond
Fred Jesson
Everley Gregg
Dolly Messiter
Marjorie Mars
Mary Norton
Margaret Barton
Tea Room Assistant Beryl Walters
Alfie Bass
Waiter at the Royal (uncredited)
Wallace Bosco
Doctor After Bobbie's Accident (uncredited)
Nuna Davey
Herminie Rolandson (uncredited)
Valentine Dyall
Alec's Friend Stephen Lynn (uncredited)
Irene Handl
The Cellist and Organist (uncredited)
Jack May
Boat Rental Man (uncredited)
Avis Scott
Kardomah Waitress (uncredited)
Robert Krasker
Director of Photography
David Lean
Additional Writing
Ronald Neame
Additional Writing
George Pollock
Assistant Director
David Lean
Director
Ronald Neame
Producer
The White Rose
Anima
The Unknown Past
Ashab El Saadah
The Father
The Tale of Three Girls
Ani... Dr. Kashinath Ghanekar
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Aug 24, 1946
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1978 · 13 wins
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1981 · 11 wins
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