Amazon.com Essentials:
To many, Brief Encounter may seem like a relic of more proper
times--or, specifically, more properly British times--when the
pressures of marital decorum and fidelity were perhaps more keenly felt. In
truth, David Lean's fourth film remains a timeless study of true love (or,
rather, the promise of it), and the aching desire for intimate connection
that is often subdued by the obligations of marriage. And so it is that
ordinary Londoners Alec (Trevor Howard), a married doctor, and contented
housewife Laura (Celia Johnson) meet by chance one day in a train station,
when he volunteers to remove a fleck of ash from her eye (a romantic
gesture that, perhaps, inspired Robert Towne's "flaw in the iris" scene
in Chinatown).
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
