BRIEF ENCOUNTER – Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard – d: David Lean

Brief Encounter (1945)
Direction: David Lean
Screenplay: David Lean, Ronald Neame, Anthony Havelock-Allan; from Noel Coward’s play Still Life
Cast: Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard, Stanley Holloway, Joyce Carey, Cyril Raymond
 

Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard in Brief Encounter
 

Synopsis:

A married doctor (Trevor Howard) and a housewife (Celia Johnson) have an adulterous (platonic) affair.

The Pros:

Shadow-bathed, smoke-enshrouded railway stations (cinematography by Robert Krasker) to the strains of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2.
David Lean’s delicate direction, and Lean, Ronald Neame, and Anthony Havelock-Allan’s sensitive adaptation of Noel Coward’s play Still Life. No Hollywood ending here, and no syrupy, cutesy moments, either.
Best actress Oscar nominee and New York Film Critics winner Celia Johnson’s über-British performance as the sympathetic, adulterous, stiff-upper-lipped, and most sad-eyed housewife in all of England, and [...]

Best Films – 1945

Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard in Brief Encounter
FILM
Blithe Spirit
d: David Lean; scr: Noel Coward
Boule de suif / Angel and Sinner
d: Christian-Jaque; scr: Henri Jeanson
Brief Encounter
d: David Lean; scr: Noel Coward, Anthony Havelock-Allan, David Lean, Ronald Neame
Dead of Night
d: Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden, Robert Hamer; scr: John Baines, Angus MacPhail
Les Enfants du paradis / Children of Paradise
d: Marcel Carné; scr: Jacques Prévert
Leave Her to Heaven
d: John M. Stahl; scr: Jo Swerling
Love Letters
d: William Dieterle; scr: Ayn Rand
Mildred Pierce
d: Michael Curtiz; scr: Ranald McDougall, Catherine Turney
A Royal Scandal
d: Otto Preminger; scr: Edwin Justus Mayer
State Fair
d: Walter Lang; scr: Paul Green, Oscar Hammerstein II, Sonya Levien
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
d: Elia Kazan; scr: Tess Slesinger, Frank [...]