Brief Encounter, An English tale of forbidden love

[Unregistered - V]

The couple meet in the tearoom of a railway station, where she is waiting for the steam train home after a day's shopping. A speck of coal dirt gets caught in her eye, and, without a word of introduction, the gallant local doctor steps forward and removes it.

The following eighty minutes of this, as Jeremy Paxman put it, beautifully written movie depict their deepening love and the guilt each feels about it. Trevor Howard's tall, spare frame, strong nose and jaw, Celia Johnson's retrousse nose and clear eyes seem to embody the ideal Englishman and Englishwoman. They belong to the infinitely respectable middle class, in which strangulated scheme of things "levly gels" wish only to be "relly heppy".

The doctor begins his seduction with the classic English gambit of commenting on the weather. A few moments later he mentions music. "My husband is not musical," she says. "Good for him," says the doctor. Good for him? Why is it good for him? It makes it sound as if he managed to fight off a killer desease. It is good for him, of course, because it recognizes a God-ordained right to philisitinism and the rectitude of individuals who please themselves in their own homes.

As Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto comes and goes in the background, their affair unfolds, measured out in cups of tea in the waiting room of the Milford Station. "I believe we'd all be different if we lived in a warm and sunny climate," Celia Johnson thinks to herself at one point. "Then we shouldn't be so withdrawn and shy and difficult." Being English, she feels no animosity towards her husband, which she considers "kindly and unemotional". Trevor Howard, equally trapped in a dry marriage, also expresses no hostility towards his wife and children. But the two of them are in the force of passion they can hardly control.

"We must be sensible", is the constant refrain. "If we control ourselves, there's still time."

In the end, despite all the protestations of undying devotion, the romance remains unconsummated. He does the decent thing and takes a job at a hospital in South Africa. She returns to her decent but dull husband.

The End.

Edited May 12, 2004 by Viraboff