Brief Encounter- the film

I would say that Fred does know something has been going on with Laura, even if he doesn't know exactly what.

In fact that's the most tear jerking part.....something like...

"You've been a long way away haven't you? Thank you for coming back to me."

In 2025. You really can’t take this film out of its historical and cultural context.

I'm sure I would have felt differently back then. I was just replying to the poster who was saying we could all do with more duty and less personal desire in our relationships.

There’s kind of a counterpoint to it in a scene in Victoria Wood’s Housewife 49. She meets her doctor played by Jason Watkins on the train. He’s a bit drunk but he confesses that he’s met someone else and has no intention of doing the right thing as life is too short and the war has made him realise this.

That is very sad. I mean, you may well be right, but I like to think that my husband and I choose to be with each other each day. And if we ever get to the point where we don't choose that, we will go our separate ways.

At around the time BE was made my grandparents split up after 20 something years of misery. Well maybe there were some happy times at the start. One thing my mother and her siblings were united on was they should have split up years earlier and spared their children the misery they experienced.

How they ever married is a mystery, she was full of life, she'd dance round the kitchen, loved the cinema and never judged people. He was severe, I honestly don't ever remember him smiling.let alone having fun.

Staying together isn't always the noble choice.

I feel so sad thinking of the years when granny would be controlled by him but at least she had some years of freedom although she was poor and life wasn't easy.

How much better would it have been for both of them to find their perfect match.

Disclaimer – it's a while since I watched it, so memory may not be 100%:

They're both a little unhappy/unfulfilled, aren't they, rather than deeply unhappy or being abused or anything in their marriages?
That's what I find affecting and heartbreaking about it – they're OK, they just could feel better. It's about 'settling', I suppose, and no, that's not a very modern approach. There's great pathos in it though.
And the music! <<swoons>> It put me on to Rachmaninov, who I've loved ever since.

You might have felt differently in 1936.

Even now, when we have one of our sadly very very common infidelity threads, there are often people (not everyone, but a significant number) who say words to the effect of "Where's his sense of duty to his family, his vows and his commitment? Does he think we don't also fantasise about amazing fake lives?"

But the husband never knows of the ‘affair’. He’s not affected by it - Laura is. She loves him (in a different way to Trevor H, of course) and doesn’t want to hurt him.

In the moral climate of the 40s the family and children were regarded as of paramount importance - much more so than personal sexual fulfilment.

The tea rooms from the film are still running at Carnforth railway station. Worth a visit if you like the film

It's a beautiful, moving, romance. Very much of its time, with very fine acting.
I must have watched it dozens of times !
I had it on a video, now DVD.

But life is so different nowadays. Back then, when divorce was a disgrace to the entire family people often had to choose between their own personal happiness and the 'reputation' of themselves and their family.

I don't think we can judge 'then' against 'now'. We have so much more freedom now to do what we want and to make ourselves happy.

I must be very bad because I think most people stay together because of duty. It makes me sad to think of it, but that’s life as an adult it seems.

Me too. I agree, even tv programmes are now giving a quick rundown of what happened before the ad break, in case anyone has forgotten the gist of the 30 minute programme.

Thanks for this thread I’m sorted now x

If my husband was having an emotional affair with someone else and then came back to me as a duty rather than being with her as a personal desire, I would tell him to fuck right off.

Even the late Queen’s accent changed over the decades. She talked ‘quite common’ at the end ( compared to her 1950s broadcasts)!

I also love it. All the 'things unsaid' and the subtlety with which they are communicated - we don't get things like that nowadays when everything has to be written VERY VERY BIG FOR PEOPLE WHO MIGHT NOT UNDERSTAND IT OTHERWISE... I get tired of being hit around the head by Big Messaging, and I love the gentle, understated nature of this entire film.

In fact, I'm going to go and watch it now...

Maybe you are the OP's husband, and neither of you has realised the other one is on Mumsnet!

I think BE is realistic in the sense that life isn’t perfect - things don’t always work out, people who perhaps should be together can’t be, or chances are lost.

IAWL is too ‘pat’ for me - life isn’t really like that. Bad things really do happen to good people and vice versa. I don’t buy the happy ending at all.

I love the accents nobody is that posh these days 😀

This 💯plus Rachmaninov too…..
I got the composer in a quiz once and I thought that I could feel the men in my team falling in love with me just cos I knew it 🤣

I love it.

Both protagonists initially pretending that there was nothing in it but of course the dam breaks.

A most perfectly acted scene occurs when the pair are having lunch in a restaurant and two women known to Laura arrive and see them. While Laura makes overly-bright, slightly panicky introductions and Alec gives polite greetings, the simultaneous secret horror felt by both of them is palpable.

Anyone who said it was one of their favourite films though I'd look at with huge suspicion.

Suspicion of what?

What about the towering works of art and literature like Anna or Madame Bovary? It’s part of being human to be tempted and either to suppress your desires (as They do in BE) or to act on them, and bear the consequences of your choices.

One of the fantastic pleasures of film and literature is that they enable us to experience all kinds of emotions, situations, dilemmas and struggles vicariously - at a safe distance- whilst also (hopefully) giving us insight and understanding of the people involved.

i don’t judge these characters harshly though - they are bound up in strong emotions and difficult situations.

I love Brief Encounter and think people who don't have no soul, but would happily admit to loathing It's A Wonderful Life.