Brief Encounter (The Criterion Collection)

Brief Encounter (The Criterion Collection)

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Movie Reviews of Brief Encounter (The Criterion Collection)

Movie Review: A post-war 'Madame Bovary'.
Summary: 5 Stars

The first time you see 'Brief Encounter', you are most likely to be struck by its overpowering romantic qualities - in the same way Laura breaks the confines of her identity as wife, housewife and mother by loving another man, so the film's middle-class trappings (the clipped dialogue; the use of Rachmaninoff as an emotional signifier of class and taste) are burst by Lean's near-reckless visual intrusions, his violent editing and use of close-up at moments of extreme passion; the creation of awkwardly painful situations; the use of dark film noir lighting to at once swamp, threaten and ennoble this erring couple. Like Laura (see the emblematic scene where she laughs hysterically the night her son is run over, but probably first realises she's in love and her husband doesn't deserve her) - surface politeness becomes feverish, uncontrollable.

This sense doesn't diminish on subsequent viewings - the film IS incredibly moving. But it becomes more noticeable how a critique or commentary is built into the film. It is easy to forget that we only get to see one scene of the affair that can actually be called objective - the opening sequence interrupted by Dolly - and this is characterised by what isn't seen or shown. Everything else is mediated through Laura's point of view, in a long flashback constructed as the confession to her husband she will never utter. We notice that, as a reader and film-goer, how prone to flights of fantasy she is (see the glorious travelogue montage). We see not only how many scenes feature prison-like bars (especially in the living room in which she is thinking about the romance), but how many feature windows, mirrors and screens. These are not just little boxes that confirm the confinement of Laura's life, or visual emblems of her split between duty and desire, but also little screens on which she, perhaps, projects her fantasies. She is often seen constructing stories or moods - putting on the Rachmaninoff before she reminisces; ringing up an acquaintance to cover up a lie.

What I suggest is, Lean and Coward ask us to separate what is true about the romance and what is romanticised. It seems to be a crucial split between the mind and body. The liaison is an Ideal, a thing of the mind - though dangerous, it can be contained. But look what happens when sex rears its awkward head. The order imposed on the transgressive affair (how very English that adultery should be train-timetabled!), the formal logic in which the narrative is constructed breaks down. Firstly, Laura's voiceover is for the only time displaced by another, Alex's urging her to come to the flat; the second is her impossible knowledge of Alec's being confronted by his friend after she has run out the back way - she couldn't possibly have seen. This is when the film stops being a fantasy, and becomes truly disruptive and dangerous. The 'problem' is not the fear of adultery per se or social transgression, but a fear of sex itself.

Because, 'Brief Encounter' is ultimately, like 'Madame Bovary' for France, a fierce critique of middle-class England, not just the way it chokes the life and imagination out of people, forcing them to replace life with second-hand romantic imagination; but the way the victims are complicit in their own imprisonment, lacking the will to escape or change. This malaise is symbolised in the grit that gets in Laura's eye (Alex, by taking it out, gives her a new way of looking at the world) or the disease-carrying soot Alec hopes to eradicate - the very atmosphere of Britain decays the soul. Maybe 'fierce' is too strong an adjective - Lean is very sympathetic to Laura's agony - but as his subsequent films prove, he was never very interested in staying still. 'Encounter' is so focused on the couple, we forget what a brilliant, funny and detailed portrait the film is of post-war, rationed, suburban England, where emotion, like money, must be strictly rationed.

Summary of Brief Encounter (The Criterion Collection)

It so happens that their schedules coincide at the train station every Thursday, and their casual attraction grows, through quiet conversation and longing expressions, into the desperate recognition of mutual love. From this point forward, Lean turns this utterly precise, 85-minute film into a bracing study of romantic suspense, leading inevitably, and with the paranoid, furtive glances of a spy thriller, to the moment when this brief encounter must be consummated or abandoned altogether. Decades later, the outcome of this affair--both agonizing and rapturous--is subtle and yet powerful enough to draw tears from the numbest of souls, and spark debate regarding the tragedy or virtue of the choices made. A truly universal film, with meticulously controlled emotions revealed through the flawless performances of Howard and Johnson, and an enduring masterpiece that continued Lean on his course to cinematic greatness. --Jeff Shannon