The Passionate Friends (1949)

Director:

David Lean

Writers:

Eric Ambler (writer)
Stanley Haynes (adaptation)
(more)

Release Date:

26 January 1949 (UK)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

The Passionate Friends were in love when young, but separated, and she married an older man. Then Mary...

Plot Keywords:

1930s | Airplane | Airport | Suicide Attempt | Banker

Cast

Ann Todd	...	Mary Justin
Claude Rains	...	Howard Justin
Trevor Howard	...	Prof. Steven Stratton
Isabel Dean	...	Pat Stratton
Betty Ann Davies	...	Miss Layton
Arthur Howard	...	Servant
Guido Lorraine	...	Hotel Manager
Marcel Poncin	...	Hall Porter
Natasha Sokolova	...	Chambermaid
Hélène Burls	...	Flowerwoman
Jean Serret	...	Emigration Official
Frances Waring	...	Charwoman
Wanda Rogerson	...	Bridge Guest
Wilfrid Hyde-White	...	Solicitor
Helen Piers
Ina Pelly
John Hudson
Max Earle

Directed by
David Lean

Writing credits (in alphabetical order)
Eric Ambler		writer
Stanley Haynes		adaptation
David Lean		adaptation
H.G. Wells		novel

Produced by
Ronald Neame	....	producer
Norman Spencer	....	associate producer
Eric Ambler	....	producer (uncredited)

Original Music by
Richard Addinsell

Cinematography by
Guy Green

Film Editing by
Geoffrey Foot
Clive Donner		(uncredited)
Jack Harris		(uncredited)

Costume Design by
Margaret Furse

Makeup Department
Biddy Chrystal	....	hair stylist

Production Management
Pat MacDonnell	....	assistant production manager (uncredited)

Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
George Pollock	....	assistant director
Laurie Knight	....	third assistant director (uncredited)

Art Department
John Bryan	....	set designer
T. Hopewell Ash	....	assistant art director (as Tim Hopewell-Ash)

Sound Department
Stanley Lambourne	....	sound recordist
Gordon K. McCallum	....	sound recordist
Winston Ryder	....	dubbing editor
Peter Davies	....	first assistant dubbing mixer (uncredited)

Camera and Electrical Department
Oswald Morris	....	camera operator

Editorial Department
Jim Pople	....	assistant editor (uncredited)

Music Department
Muir Mathieson	....	musical director
Leonard Isaacs	....	orchestrator (uncredited)

Other crew
J. Arthur Rank	....	presenter
Maggie Unsworth	....	continuity (as Margaret Sibley)

Production Companies

• Cineguild

Distributors

• General Film Distributors (GFD) (1949) (UK) (theatrical)
• Universal Pictures (1949) (USA) (theatrical)

Other Companies

• The Philharmonia Orchestra of London  soundtrack performed by
• Universal International Pictures (UI)  us releasing agent

Also Known As:

One Woman's Story (USA)

Runtime:

Spain:86 min | USA:95 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15 | Australia:PG

Filming Locations:

Chamonix, Haute-Savoie, France

Company:

Cineguild

Trivia:

Production began with Ronald Neame as director.

Movie Connections:

Version of The Passionate Friends (1922)

Soundtrack:

Auld Lang Syne

aka One Woman's Story

This Rank/Cineguild production directed by David Lean is based on a novel by H G Wells, here adapted by Lean and Stanley Haynes, though with a screenplay credited to Eric Ambler. Although the plot is about a triangle, Lean's focus is on Ann Todd as the woman between two men, her husband and the man who was her first love but whom she refused to marry. Her situation is presented in an exchange between the man, Trevor Howard and Todd - "If two people really love each other they want to be together. They want to belong to each other", Todd - "I want to belong to myself", "Then your life will be a failure". However in the tradition of upper class Brits, Todd's life of failure means a marriage to a successful banker, Claude Rains. The narrative has an unusual triple flashback structure, which is perhaps why it needed three writers, with the present being narrated by Todd with the prospect of a divorce, and flashbacks to the vacation in Switzerland where the instigating incident occurs, Todd's memory/flashback of 9 years earlier re-meeting Howard, and small memories of their first romance. The initial meeting is tainted by lines like Todd's "Why can't we be in love without the clutching and gripping", though later Todd admits to "not being a very good person". Howard's character has his ambiguities too, being a university biology lecturer who knowingly has an affair with a married woman. The infidelity gets a funny spin by Rains' business with Germany and Italy pre-WW2, and Rains saying he has "a taste for intrigue", though the film being made post-WW2 allows him to speak of the "Teutonic hysteria" of the Germans. In spite of some of Lean's technical touches, the thing that de-passionates the situation is Todd, in her first film for her then husband. Whilst at times she resembles Garbo, the rather butch Todd lacks the divine one's expressiveness, with Lean reduced to filming her running from Howard in slow motion to give her some lyricism. All three of the leads are oddly lit indelicately, perhaps to suggest that all this passage of time has aged them, but this with Todd, adds to the destruction of romantic intent. Lean provides a vocal montage of telephone conversations, cuts from a kiss to a bunch of flowers, doors slamming to a typewriter slide of the divorce document, gives Rains a cuckold paranoid montage, and has a "Keep Smiling" poster featured in the background of the climactic scene in the train underground, though the idea of Todd not buying a ticket before she enters rather pre-empts things. Rains has the audience empathy, even if the odd way he stand in a ¾ pose when he confronts someone seems silly. He is the more emotional of the three, but because of the British standards of polite behaviour, his yells are either heard off-camera or with his back to us. The best scene reads as Hitchcock-influenced with Rains dictating to his secretary and Lean continually cutting to a pair of tickets to a play Todd and Howard go to see. The title First Love gets a comic payoff when we hear it is a musical with a fatuous title song.