Best Films - 1945
by Andre Soares
Long before David Lean began working on the big, broad canvases of The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and Doctor Zhivago (1965), the British director focused mostly on smaller-scale, intimate dramas such as This Happy Breed (1944), Brief Encounter (1945), and Great Expectations (1946). Some are better than others, but none is better than Brief Encounter, a delicate, touching portrait of middle-aged (extra-marital) love set against London’s smoke-enshrouded train stations.
Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard are the two unglamorous lovers who find together one last brief moment of unbridled passion before resigning themselves to a life of personal obligations and social respectability. Based on Noel Coward’s 1935 one-act play Still Life (Coward adapted it with Lean, Anthony Havelock-Allan, and Ronald Neame), Brief Encounter has aged but little. Trevor Howard was hardly the most interesting of actors, but he is a solid presence here, and Celia Johnson, even if a tad theatrical at times, remains quite moving as the guilt-ridden adulteress in love.
Robert Krasker is the man responsible for the film’s beautifully atmospheric black-and-white cinematography, while Sergey Rachmaninov’s hypnotic, profoundly romantic Piano Concerto No. 2 is Brief Encounter’s de facto third protagonist.
FILM
Brief Encounter
Blithe Spirit
Boule de suif / Angel and Sinner
Dead of Night
Les Enfants du paradis / Children of Paradise
Leave Her to Heaven
Love Letters
Mildred Pierce
State Fair
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
DIRECTOR
David Lean (Brief Encounter)
Marcel Carné (Les Enfants du paradis / Children of Paradise)
John Cromwell (The Enchanted Cottage)
Michael Curtiz (Mildred Pierce)
William Dieterle (Love Letters)
Elia Kazan (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn)
Walter Lang (State Fair)
David Lean (Blithe Spirit)
Otto Preminger (A Royal Scandal)
John M. Stahl (Leave Her to Heaven)
ACTOR
Aldo Fabrizi (Roma, città aperta / Open City)
Pierre Brasseur (Les Enfants du paradis / Children of Paradise)
Gary Cooper (Along Came Jones)
Boris Karloff (The Body Snatcher)
Claude Rains (Caesar and Cleopatra)
Edward G. Robinson (Scarlet Street)
Edward G. Robinson (The Woman in the Window)
Zachary Scott (The Southerner)
ACTRESS
Joan Crawford (Mildred Pierce)
Tallulah Bankhead (A Royal Scandal)
Constance Cummings (Blithe Spirit)
Peggy Ann Garner (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn)
Kay Hammond (Blithe Spirit)
Jennifer Jones (Love Letters)
Dorothy McGuire (The Enchanted Cottage)
Dorothy McGuire (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn)
Micheline Presle (Boule de suif / Angel and Sinner)
Gene Tierney (Leave Her to Heaven)
SUPPORTING ACTOR
Pavel Kadochnikov (Ivan Groznyi I / Ivan the Terrible Part I)
Charles Coburn (A Royal Scandal)
James Dunn (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn)
Gene Lockhart (The House on 92nd Street)
Vincent Price (Leave Her to Heaven)
Vincent Price (A Royal Scandal)
Cyril Raymond (Brief Encounter)
Michael Redgrave (Dead of Night)
Zachary Scott (Mildred Pierce)
Georges Tourreil (Boule de Suif / Angel and Sinner)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Margaret Rutherford (Blithe Spirit)
Eve Arden (Mildred Pierce)
Joan Blondell (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn)
Ann Blyth (Mildred Pierce)
María Casarès (Les Enfants du paradis / Children of Paradise)
Joan Lorring (The Corn Is Green)
Anna Magnani (Roma, città aperta / Open City)
Eleanor Parker (Pride of the Marines)
Donna Reed (They Were Expendable)
Alexis Smith (Rhapsody in Blue)
SCREENPLAY
Ranald McDougall & Catherine Turney (Mildred Pierce)
Sergio Amidei & Federico Fellini (Roma, città aperta / Open City)
John Baines & Angus MacPhail (Dead of Night)
Noel Coward, Anthony Havelock-Allan, David Lean & Ronald Neame (Brief Encounter)
Noel Coward (Blithe Spirit)
Henri Jeanson (Boule de suif / Angel and Sinner)
Edwin Justus Mayer (A Royal Scandal)
Jacques Prévert (Les Enfants du paradis / Children of Paradise)
Casey Robinson & Frank Cavett (The Corn Is Green)
Tess Slesinger & Frank Davis (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn)
CINEMATOGRAPHY
Harry Stradling (The Picture of Dorian Grey)
Edward Cronjager (Nob Hill)
Lee Garmes (Love Letters)
Tony Gaudio (A Song to Remember)
Ernest Haller (Mildred Pierce)
James Wong Howe (Confidential Agent)
Robert Krasker (Brief Encounter)
Leon Shamroy (Leave Her to Heaven)
Douglas Slocombe & Stan Pavey (Dead of Night)
Ted Tetzlaff (The Enchanted Cottage)
ORIGINAL SCORE
Max Steiner (Mildred Pierce)
Max Steiner (The Corn Is Green)
Franz Waxman (Pride of the Marines)
Victor Young (Love Letters)
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