Brief Encounter- the film

I love this film, it’s one of my all time favourites. I love the accents, the clothes, everything.

I can’t bear James Stewart. I’m always trying to analyse the reason - my sister loves him.

If anyone agrees and can throw light on this feeling, I’d be grateful. I’m usually pretty good at working out why I don’t like a performer.

@BusMumsHolidayI so agree. Love BE and Age of innocence has a similar theme though set decades earlier. The last scene when Newland Archer 'returns to his hotel alone' gets me every time. He know he can never recapture his lost love and though he never quite lived his best life, he did the right thing in returning to May. Duty versus passion again.

So did I.

I absolutely love that film.

I think it was just a joke.

It's one of my favourite films. I am fascinated by how different things were less than a century ago.

@FinallyHere

IIRC the supposed gay subtext was purported as a theory by a french critic or french audiences as they just couldn't understand why Alec and Laura didn't do the deed at the friend's apartment, so I think they thought the sexual attraction was between the friend and Alec and he came back early on purpose. I could be wrong but I think I remember that on a documentary.

Bore off will you?

I didn’t say boiled meat, potato and rhubarb pie, so check your own grammar.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

I think the film speaks to that specific time and place where ambition, art, drive, etc…were all forbidden to women. They were just supposed to decorate a domestic scene. so the meeting of two unrelated adults to talk about ideas in itself seemed shocking and transgressive.

A related (and sappy but very watchable) version of this in a later American aesthetic is The Bridges of Madison County which reveals to the adult children of the heroine that their sedate foreign farming mother had had a secret passionate affair one brief summer.

it is a beautiful film
you are not allowed to criticise it
its a classic

It's not that. I thought she was lovely. It's a particular dislike I have for him, not just in this film but in anything. I feel similar about James Stewart actually and everyone seems to love him.

I love this film. The music🥰, the age, the characters.

"Thank you for coming back to me.". Gets me every time.

I think both Howard and Johnson are meant to be fairly ordinary suburban people - perfectly reasonable-looking but not glamorous or overtly sexy. And that immediate post-war period must have been very drab, depressing and lacking any luxury, especially in terms of clothes, hair and make-up.

Laura looked and dressed just like my mum’s best friend so I always thought of the couple as the antithesis of Hollywood glamour!

I have to admit this is another one of my issues with the film - I just don't like Trevor Howard. I can't imagine why Laura or any other woman would have gone there.

Yes - I’d forgotten that! You’re right.

Which makes it even more poignant and perceptive.

The nearest I'd come to that is that the writer Noel Coward was gay, which of course was illegal then and would be for another 20 years at least, and that informed his writing; that he identified with the idea of a repressed relationship that couldn't be openly declared because of social norms.

That said, the director David Lean went off the movie because at a private preview an awful women was laughing all the way through. Also, the actor Trevor Howard found it exasperating, being less of a gentleman in real life, kept asking, 'Why doesn't he just shag her?' or words very close to that effect.

and @TheignT

I think the concept of romantic love is fine if you're a medieval lady stuck in a turret but it's not necessarily a sound basis for stable families... if one set of your grandparents achieved this - that's rather lovely, but most people will feel common or garden 'love' (affection) and I've also heard it said that 'love' is a verb. I can't speak for your other grandparents - maybe opposites attracted? From what I can tell from my genealogical research (largely big industrial towns, working and petit bourgeois class) - virtually everyone in the C19th and C20th married. I seriously doubt they were all flung into the heavens on a feeling of being 'in love' and having met their soul mate... many will have been generally happy and some not so happy but it's human nature to think the grass is always greener on the other side in all sorts of ways. Aside from romantic love, the nuclear family is a fairly modern concept in historical terms.

I read a pp say they thought Alec and Laura should've got together at the end of the film - absolutely disagree!! It would've been a completely different film! It was titled Brief Encounter after all.

Great cooked breakfast and piping hot!

just came on to see if there was a thread!!

I'm ancient, saw it years ago as a teen with my mum: 'what was THAT all about, they didn't even DO anything?'

just caught it last night on my way to netflix and thought I'd watch it for a bit, mainly to chortle at the accents

anyway, it vortexed me in, of course. I loved it. and I surprised myself by blubbing at the husband and the embrace at the end

perfect

tho trevor howard was punching

I can't vote you are being unreasonable as whether or not you like a film is down to personal choice, however, I think this film is one of the classics and I have watched it numerous times.
I think for it to really resonate you have to have suffered heartache or a longing for something which just couldn't be.
Some of us experience that in our lifetimes and some don't, for those that have I think this film is extremely emotional as you can empathise with the heartache and the dilemma.
Please don't think I am thinking the OP's husband has had an affair as I am not but he might have known heartbreak.

Yes, I live in Carnforth, cafe was going to close about a year ago but was saved. I love the whole atmosphere in there though the station itself is abit rundown. In its heyday it was an important junction. The film is very moral and of its time, pleased to see so many still appreciate it!

Thenk you for coming beck to me…

She's so bewildered by his anger and so unworldly that it doesn't occur to her why his "friend's" death is so devastating to her.

Poor Nella and poor Cliff.

They were blessed weren't they. When 16 year old granny fell in love with a young man who was considered very unsuitable I don't suppose anyone would have put money on their elopement turning out how it did.