“Brief Encounter,” and “The Passionate Friends”–director of both was David Lean

TCM showed “The Passionate Friends” the other day and my son, my wife and I watched it. He insists and my wife agrees that we saw it a year or two ago and I believe them, though I have no idea how I forgot such a terrific film and one so much like one of my all time favorties.

I think I have mentioned “Brief Encounter:” before though I have not, I think, reviewed it. It is one of the best films I’ve ever seen and if I were to make up a list of my dozen best ever it would be on it. “Friends” is very similar as I will explain and would maybe make the second dozen list. Anyway, I decided that the only real way to do this was to review them both, though I haven’t seen “Encounter” for a little while, maybe a few months.

First of all, the films are very similar in more ways than one. They were both directed by David Lean who was quite possibly the greatest British director ever and one of the great directors of all times and who could rank with Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Michael Curtiz, John Huston, Jean Renoir and other such greats.

Both were made in immediate or almost immediate postwar Britain. “Encounter” was made in 1945 and apparently shooting started before the war had ended because they had to put up with some security restrictions that disappeared with peace. “Friends” was made in 1949, with the war a memory but not yet a very faded one, and society getting back to normal, but slowly. We have a friend who remembers rationing as a child in the 1960’s(rationing and the Beatles together?!)and we both think that on our first trip(1970’s)to the UK there were wartime reminders still there though not immediately noticeable in all cases. The war plays no part at all in “Encounter” and is only mentioned occasionally as a shared experience in “Friends.”

Both of these films are made in a way that seems, curiously, spare and lush at the same time, I guess maybe visually the first and emotionally the second. Both are about doomed romances, ones where you pull for the people with everything you have and get ready to see them disappointed. Both of them could tear out your heart. Both of them leave you sad for the people, but exhilarated at the power, including the pains, of love and the role it sometimes plays in human affairs and also exhilarated at the power of films and other art forms to move us and draw us into understanding the human experience.

I think that “Encounter” is the better of the two, but “Friends” is close. They were all the things mentioned above and, of course, being David Lean films, share an understated, very British understanding of human existence and its compromises and disappointments. The male carrier of these feelings in both films is Trevor Howard

The only place where they are not the same is in their source and writing. “Encounter” was based on a play by Noel Coward from 1936,”Still Life,” a one-act effort. Coward expanded it into a full length movie story and did the screenplay with some help from Anthony Havelock-Allen and Lean). He also was active enough in putting it together that he got to claim the title of “Producer.”

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“Friends” is from a novel by, of all people, H G Wells whom I had never thought of before as a writer of love stories. Well, he was a good one, at least once, anyway. Lean himself had a hand in the screen play, as did Eric Ambler, a well known international intrigue writer of the era, and Stanley Haynes whom I don’t know.(If you paid attention when I discussed “Casablanca” you may recall that it was based on an unproduced play by Murray Bonner and Joan Alison earlier entitled “Everybody Goes to Rick’s.”)

“Brief Encounter” was Lean’s 4th or 5th movie, likely the former. Both it and “Blithe Spirit” are from 1945. He had already shown talent at film making and it came to full fruition with “Encounter.” though some would say(I wouldn’t)he did it better later, at least once, years later, with “Lawrence of Arabia”—admittedly a great film.

“Encounter” has several characters that grasp your attention from time to time, but only two who command it. They are, of course, Trevor Howard and the lovely but believably suburban Cecilia Johnson. Like “Friends” this movie is told mostly in flashback, but not in a way that clutters or tangles the story. We begin with the two of them together at a RR station and they are joined by an annoying “friend” of Cecilia’s who then gets on the train with her. The woman, a shallow non-stop talker, gives a brief but powerful demonstration of how an aggressive, needy extrovert can torture an introvert, particularly a depressed one who just wants to be left alone.

But the real story here is the man and the woman, and we learn quickly that they met in the RR depot when he helped her get something out of her eye. They seemed to fit with each other from the beginning and she quickly learned that he was an idealistic doctor who, with his family, was soon going out to South Africa. He also revealed his dreams of curing an ailment which sounds much like what came to be known as “Black Lung” in the US. She is taken with his civilization behavior, basic decency and charm.

He learns that she is a suburban housewife with a home near London, a suitable middle class husband who is in business and two growing children. It is clear that he finds something attractive about her, not just her appearance, but something deep inside her where he sees a need or longing or something that maybe she doesn’t herself. They both are unhappy at the idea of parting and she reveals that Thursday is her day to come to town and she does it nearly every week. He is there Thursdays too, and they agree, rather causally to meet again the following week.

It doesn’t require a genius, of course, to predict at least some of what will happen next. Of course they find each other’s company comforting and fun, and of course they lunch and go to the movies and take a short trip to the country. Soon they realize(maybe a reel or two behind the audience)that they are in love.

They take joy in this temporarily, but trouble looms in many ways. Could they consider breaking up two families with children involved? Could she leave a man who has been at the very least a faithful and warm husband? Could either of them do this to their children? And most pressing of all, it is nearly time for him and his family to leave. What could they possible do?

The rest of the film is spent answering that question. I am not going to go into too much detail but I will say that Lean gets immensely moving performances out of these two stars as they play two decent, high minded people who find themselves hopelessly in love, an impossible love, with no way out. They twist and turn trying to find an answer but none appears. They consider out and out adultery, but circumstances intervene(perhaps more on this later) and she even briefly considers suicide,

One of the most gripping realizations in watching both of these films comes when you grasp that, to a much lesser extent, trains and RR stations play a fairly large part in “Friends” too. There is, in fact, one scene near the end where the Ann Todd character stands near a RR track with a train approaching and thinks the unthinkable as does Cecelia Johnson in “Encounter.”

Without going into more detail than I think appropriate there is nothing more to say about ” Brief Encounter,” until maybe I do a summing up of the two later. But I say this now. This is one of the great films and it manages to break your heart while honoring both your taste and your intelligence. The emotions are strong, but they are real, not phony, and the people civilized and decent, and these make it a great film.

To be a bit repetitive, “Friends” is very much like “Encounter” in many ways. Comparing the two leading ladies I would say Ann Todd was, if not a classic beauty, quite close to it. Celia Johnson was not, but she WAS an attractive woman, well dressed, trim and warm in her manner. It is difficult to think that any reasonable gentleman would reject either one of them out of hand. A choice between the two would be difficult.

The “Passionate Friends” is also told in flashback or flashbacks, but Lean’s handling of this is keen enough not to tangle up the plot. The story involves Todd, Trevor Howard again, and Claude Rains, so we have more of a classic lovers’ triangle here, though not quite the usual kind. When she realizes on what must be New Years, 1948 that she is in the same hotel with Steven(Trevor Howard), she flashes back nine years to what I guess would have to be New Years 1939. She and Steven were in love then and the thoughts and memories come flooding back.

Since this time also included the Second World War, it would have been reasonable enough to deal with that and what each experienced in the war. Most directors would be tempted, I think, to do that, though obviously they would need additional writing since the Wells novel was published before WWI. Lean wisely avoided the temptation to do this and dealt mostly with the three principal characters and therefore could concentrate on their personalities, characters and actions, without worrying about things like the fate of the world or Western Civilization.

Mary was in love with Steven then and their affair nearly led to marriage but didn’t quite get there. She wanted to “belong to herself,” and couldn’t think that would happen if she married him. The trouble was, and she seems to have noted this with unusual clarity given the situation, that Steven was wildly in love with here. He would not intentionally stifle her, but his love might do so and she couldn’t take the step. A decade and a half or so later and this would have meant marriage counsellors, psychologists and so on, likely along with a lot of 1960’s yammering about truth and honesty and other values easily degraded by too much palaver, particularly on screen. This is, of course, is not to say such people mayn’t be necessary, but there is something relieving in the fact that she makes up her own mind and bears the consequences as severe as they were.

Instead she accepts a a proposal from Howard(Claude Rains). Steven is a teacher, later a University professor. Howard is a big time financial guy, high up enough in a large bank that he is tasked with the somewhat thankless job of dealing with foreign bankers in Europe and trying to work out agreements. He is smart, patient, and dedicated. He offers Mary stability and the wealth she wants, but also something more. He wants a marriage of affection and respect, but not real closeness. They will offer each other some emotional support but not get too close. Meanwhile they will share the good life his profession may bring them and be comfortable together if not deeply in love.

The rest of the story is mostly a working out of these conflicting emotions on Mary’s part and her dealing with the fact she chose comfortable affection and support over passionate and deep love. Was she right? Do you think she found out? Well, watch the movie the next time it’s on TV.

I will add this–Mary, not surprisingly, is on a sort of up and down escalator with her feelings and we get to see this on two or three occasions where she is reminded of (or actually sees) Steven again. The film ends with them enjoying each other’s company in Switzerland while her husband, who knows the past, broods.

But I want to say this about Howard. Claude Rains was a rather versatile actor who could do good guys or bad or mixtures of the two. Maybe his greatest role was his mixture, the cynical, manipulative, but ultimately heroic French Officer in “Casablanca.” In “Friends” Howard seems unlikeably cold at the first, a smooth rich guy who will use his wealth and also his ability at emotional distancing to get the woman he wants, even though not being deeply in love with her. But towards the end Lean allows us a deeper look into his emotions. He knows-or has come to know– the “romantic” side of love too. Now, experiencing some pain, he has come to feel it for Mary. He is quietly but movingly human.

These two films are really ghosts of old time films, I assure you. I doubt if they would sell today, though one never knows. But they are frequently on TV(“Encounter” particularly)and I urge you to see them if you get the opportunity. If you want to see the world the way it was(or was perceived by filmmakers to be)decades ago, you likely could not beat these.