Brief Encounter

I would like you to watch the whole of David Lean's Brief Encounter, and consider the following issues. Brief Encounter is commonly regarded as one of the major British cinematic successes of the 1940s, and possibly for British cinema as a whole. It has remained an enduring success with audiences, even if it verges towards melodrama, cliché and typically "British" middle class understatement. The use of the Rachmaninov 2nd Piano Concerto throughout; the use of dark and oppressive shadows; the obsessional scenes with trains and railway stations; the portrayal of ordinary middle class suburban life; etc., all of these characterize the film and turn it into something unique within British film.

The film was released in 1945, directed by David Lean, and with a script by Noel Coward (who had earlier scripted In Which We Serve), and was enormously popular with both audiences and critics. As Robert Murphy remarks:

With its dimly-lit interiors, its hysterical heroine, its threateningly expressive shadows, its theme of doomed love, its creation of a hostile and repressive world, it is difficult to understand how the film fits into an aesthetic of realism at all, but at the time it was greeted as a sign that British cinema was capable of the same sort of truth to life seen in Italian neo-Realism and the films of Orson Welles and William Wyler.

Some Questions for you to consider:

• What do you make of the central heroine, Laura, and the way in which the film presents her dilemma? Is she "hysterical", "repressed", "irrational" and "immature"? Or do you see her as a sympathetic character, passionate, idealistic, authentic, etc.?
• Laura has to make a choice between her steady, predictable, crossword-puzzle-playing husband and Doctor Harvey (Trevor Howard), passionate, idealistic and sympathetic. What do you notice about the ways in which the film characterizes both men, and therefore the choice that Laura has to make between them?
• The film was made in 1944/5, and released in 1945, the year of the War's end. In what ways do you feel that the film shows itself to be the product of that era, and how is that society (middle class, suburban, etc.) characterized within the film: middle class rituals and safety? The portrayal of threatening shadows and oppressive dark alleys? Does the film appear to you to be making any comments on this society? How does it contrast with the portrayal of the same world in William Wyler's Mrs Miniver?
• For much of the film we are immersed in the life and culture of the suburban middle classes, but not exclusively so? What do you notice about the portrayal of the classes within the film? Look particularly at the portrayal of sexuality in Laura's world and the world of the women working at the station-café.
• The film is, essentially, concerned with Laura's sexuality, and her inner conflict between her desires and sense of duty. How do you think the film presents this issue of sexuality? Are there contrasting ways in which the film might have portrayed sexuality in general, or does the film appear to be as "repressed" and "uptight" as Laura herself?
• In the end Laura returns to her husband, who appears to show understanding and also relief that she has "returned" to him. Do you think that the film portrays this as the "right" and "appropriate" thing to do, on balance, or does it contrive this resolution? What conclusions, ultimately, does the film appear to offer in terms of adultery and Laura's position as a woman, wife and mother? Would it matter if Laura had been a man?
• One of the points made in the course to date concerns the new representations of femininity which arose in the War period, with the sense that women can do work which had usually been the task of men. Do you find evidence of this in Brief Encounter? Think, perhaps, of the contrast with Jane Brown Changes Jobs
• Finally, Andre Bazin remarks of the film that it would be difficult to imagine a "more realistic portrait of English manners and psychology". Does the film strike you as a quintessentially "English" portrait? And do you see the film as "realistic" (or melodramatic, a 40s "Woman's Picture")

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