"The first time David Lean's 1945 romantic masterpiece was shown to the public, the audience were in stitches. It not being a comedy, this was far from ideal. The director was so embarrassed, he returned to his hotel planning to break into the film lab and burn the negative at the earliest opportunity. Eighty years on, the legacy of Brief Encounter has proved anything but."
"Set in a noirish and literally (if not figuratively) steamy 1930s, the film stars Celia Johnson as Laura - perfectly ordinary, perfectly married, and painfully middle-class. Laid low by a piece of grit in her eye at a train station, she's attended to by a passing doctor, Alec (Trevor Howard). The pair begin a whirlwind romance despite their better natures."
Brief Encounter is a 1945 romantic film directed by David Lean that initially provoked audience laughter and embarrassed the director. The film centers on Laura, a married, middle-class woman, who meets doctor Alec at a train station after a piece of grit enters her eye; the pair enter a short, intense affair despite their better natures. The story emphasizes doomed, unconsummated yearning and duty over happiness. Wartime British production altered Noel Coward's 1936 play, shortening a year-long affair to seven weeks and shifting extramarital guilt toward middle-class self-restraint. The film became culturally iconic, widely parodied and highly ranked by British film institutions.
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]