Brief Encounter- the film

[Orangesandlemons77]

We watched this film on TV last night. DH confided in me he used to watch it years ago, over and over and had been in tears over it.

To be honest I didn't really like it. A bit boring. All about an emotional affair between two random people in the 1940s who meet in a train station and go to the pictures etc despite having husbands / wives and children at home.

It just went on and on and then finishes with them saying goodbye and her crying in the arms of her husband who she has been lying to throughout.

AIBU?

A depressingly crude, insensitive and reductive interpretation.

Indeed. From someone who clearly has no understanding of the social norms and constraints of the time.

It is a beautiful film, very much of its time and I love the quiet restraint and dignity the film portrays. I fear if you can only see this wonderful classic as "boring", then you have no soul and there is little hope for you Op. I would definitely be advising your DH to LTB.

Also love the much missed Victoria Wood's version.

I really like it is really melodramatic which i love each to their own though your husband loving it is sweet.

As an aside A wonderful life leaves me cold ! Dh says i have no heart.

Leaves me cold. I really don’t ‘feel’ them getting attached, let alone falling in love!
I’m a few yrs into state pension age group! so poss could be expected to be of an age that might ‘enjoy’? or appreciate?

An absolute classic, the music, the atmosphere, the character’s turmoil, the illustration of the constraints of society especially for women and directed by probably one of the best ever film directors- David Lean

Running off with Dolly. Brilliant 🤣

Snap! I thought I was the only one!

I'm not saying it’s a bad film, it’s beautifully shot, it was doing something groundbreaking for its time, and of course it has its place in cinema history. But when people wax lyrical about it as if it’s the height of romance, that’s where I think a bit of realism needs to creep in.

If a friend or family member told us they were having an emotional affair behind their partner’s back, most of us wouldn’t be clapping them on the back and saying how moving and noble it all was. We’d recognise it as painful, messy, and ultimately hurtful to the people being lied to. That’s real life, and I don’t think it’s wrong to hold the story up against that lens.

What makes me uneasy is how some people use Brief Encounter almost as a shield, there’s a poster on another board who describes his own emotional affair, compares it to the film, and seems to convince himself it’s something pure and untouchable rather than what it really is: crossing boundaries and betraying trust. The film might make it look poignant, but that doesn’t mean the behaviour itself is beyond criticism.

So yes, great cinema, powerful performances, definitely a classic. But let’s not pretend it’s a model of romance we’d celebrate in the real world. And I question anyone who thinks it is so beautiful

Blimey, agree with you wholly! This appraisal has completely missed the beauty of the film which was so nuanced and about so much more. It’s about the quiet intensity, the unspoken, the longing as depicted in Celia’s narrative. It’s also very much about the ordinary person and struggles they no doubt faced in the real world as we still do now. The trains with the noises and steam I’m sure p,ay into the intensity and passion no doubt and probably also remind of how the two characters were so close to just getting on it and leaving everything behind if they wanted. I thought it was so beautiful and the ending is just bittersweet but also you know deep down likely the ‘right’ thing and so ultimately the movie reminds everyone how serious infidelity actually is and sort of safely delivers both people back to their families. And it is heartbreaking how Celia is so broken at the end but obviously she’s strong also as she went back to just carry on with her old life. And she’s had this major battle and no one to share it with because of course it’s taboo and wrong and maybe that’s where a lot of her tears come from the frustration that she can’t even unburden herself once she has done the right thing.

Maybe we could join up at Christmas when it is on and have a moan 😀

Great film! Whilst you may not approve of them having a very brief emotional encounter, it is something that happens to most people at least once in their lifetime and therefore worth writing about.

It's not my very favourite film but

that bit where his friend comes back to the flat and finds them... the tawdry nature of their relationship; is it romantic love? Sexual attraction? Where does it cross the line and how do people perceive themselves? Justify their actions?

I presume that scene was quite shocking at the time.

My ds asked me the other day why I like old black and white films and, apart from all the usual stuff about story, character etc, I find them fascinating in what they reveal in the culture of the time.

To me the attraction is in the poignant quality of ‘what might have been’. I think a lot of people can relate to the experience - either of a chance encounter, or perhaps a past friendship or relationship- which we feel could have potentially blossomed, but didn’t for various reasons. Perhaps we regret not taking a chance we once had?

But also, to me there’s something very magical about an emotional affair- where everything is yet to come (at least in our imagination, if not in reality) and the object of our fantasy/desire remains perfect and untainted by the banalities of everyday life.

Sigh.

Im going to watch it now, I have never seen it.

People fall out of love, and of course it’s the right thing to do to end a relationship if you fall in love with someone else, but sometimes it’s just not possible. Especially back then. I would not judge anyone.

Actually the bit of the film that I particularly enjoy is the way Myrtle Bagot, the tea room manageress, pronounces the name of her assistant, Beryl, it cracks me up every time and I end up walking round the house shouting Beryl, Beryl in exactly the same way. There is probably no hope for me at this stage.

I think this is really at the heart of its poignancy. It touches on a truth that the things that feel most deeply important to us in the moment, that seem to shape us as people, often leave no traces. The affair never really starts, they both return to their partners; for all intents and purposes it never really happened. But for Laura and Alec, it meant everything, and it's not even that it will be forgotten, it's that it never even was.

Edith Wharton also gets this absolutely bang on in the conversation between Newland Archer and Ellen Olenska in the Met Museum in The Age of Innocence. They talk about how, with the distance of time, things lose their charge and don't seem to matter; that we'll never be able to really touch how things felt to those who experienced them, because the traces of those things don't remain. It's such perfect writing.

I read an article about it years ago. The author said it was a propaganda piece, government sponsored, as just after the war too many people were having affairs or splitting up, and this film shows you that that is not the way to behave.
I recall that in the film the man's friend is extremely disapproving when he discovers that the friend he lent his flat to was going to use it to have an affair. So the film does show the social disapproval.

The author also said that the French just didn't get it. A French audience was calling out to the screen 'just get on with it' or words to that effect, i.e. go ahead and have extramarital sex, it is not a big deal.
I can't possibly comment on the French.

Regarding the Moral Police, it must be nice to be so sure of yourselves so you can damn someone else. BE is moral-it’s a story of how two people unintentionally fell in love and then decided the pain would be too great to be together. Another great Noel Cowards screenplay is This Happy Breed-always makes me cry and I love how forgiveness and stoicism are themes. Try to watch it if you haven’t already.

Comment from another user on another board "I developed a friendship with a much younger F colleague (I'm M). I kept it from my wife as I knew she would go apeshit. It wasn't physical but we couldn't just not see each other. We had such lovely days at NT places for cream teas and walking our dogs. Someone dobbed us in with a camera phone and it all blew up and she went mad. It's all resolved now but I so adored her. It was a bit like the movie Brief Encounter. That bit of heart ache and what could have been." Its absolutely boke. I just can't see fantasies about someone other than your partner and what life might have been as anything other than betrayal.

Love this film. The beautiful accents of Laura and Alec and the faux accent of the lady running the buffet; a cockney but with an attempt at sounding middle class. The sheer frustration when on their last time together the awful woman who interrupts and dominates as the time ticks away for the arrival of the train. Laura loved her husband but her life was dull and boring. Seeing Alec and going to the cinema once a week was something she did just for herself. She felt it was wrong and her guilt wouldn’t let her continue. The film has to be viewed through the lens of the time it was set x

@BusMumsHoliday

Lovely post. I went through something very intense 30 years ago and thought it was all going to kill me. Now it’s barely a memory. Life moves on.

I appreciate your emotional response 🙂 l really do.
Suppose maybe its just the acting or actors doesn’t come across on this particular film. I find it very easy to get tearful normally too lol!

Ive seen it a few times and its boring tbvh crap.
Each time ive seen it it seemed worse.
It reminds me of the film leopard in the snow.
No matter how many times you see it it just seems worse than the last time.
I love a romantic film but a film with some drama and a story line.

It’s fab! In those days I think only posh folks went to RADA and the ‘cockney’ or other working class accents are often hilarious!