Great Film overall

Excellent but underrated film

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

David Lean made almost a masterpiece on a forbidden love story in a post war period,the train station and all characters there are a backdrop of the powerful drama of a platonic love,cinema,dinners and guilty are some trace elements of those lost afternoons until the end up in railway's departure,a David Lean's movie unsurpassible many times replicated but never matched!!Resume:First watch: 2018 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 9.25

My first thought was "Oh just another B/W film from the 40's" But it is much more than that. You have to keep In mind this was a different time. The end of WW2, a country had just survived a traumatic 4 yrs.of war. A country reawakening to a new life. A Spring. People were searching for a new and better reality. 4 yrs of having to keep calm and carrying on. People wanted more in life. This story shows that longing in the two main characters. They find a brief connection to a fantasy that they know in the end is just that and that they, in the end have to do the honorable and right thing and carry on. I will not give the ending away. It is well worth waiting for.

Director David Lean earned the first Academy recognition for his career when he received a Best Director Oscar nomination, and a Screenplay Writing nomination he shared with Anthony Havelock-Allan and Ronald Neame, for this essential romance drama starring Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard. Johnson received her only Oscar recognition, a Best Actress nomination, for her role as a British housewife in an unexciting marriage such that a "brief encounter" leads to an affair (or does it?). Noel Coward wrote a play called "Still Life", which was the uncredited idea for the film's story.While sitting in her living room with her dependable, yet dull husband Fred (Cyril Raymond) and fumbling with her cross-stitch, Laura Jesson (Johnson) thinks about her relationship with Dr. Alec Harvey (Howard), a man with whom she'd had a chance meeting at a railway station when she'd gone into town. She remembers a great deal of detail, including the characters in the station's coffee shop like the station master Albert Godby (Stanley Holloway), who flirts incessantly with Myrtle (Joyce Carey), the hostess-waitress behind the counter. As if by fate, they meet again and Laura's relationship with Alec, who's also married, grows to the point that they plan to consummate it with a physical encounter at one of his friend's apartment.The film's story is really about what constitutes an affair and at what point is a wife being unfaithful to her husband. Laura contemplates all of this including whether or not to go through with the clandestine meeting. Naturally, there are some bumps and/or other circumstances along the way which make both parties think through their plans and their decisions, making sure that it's a conscience act versus one that just falls together easily.An intricately written and directed drama, against the backdrop of trying, fateful times (World War II) which deserves its high rating.

Yes, this is actually a very fine movie.But it's the dialogue, at least for an American, that drives you crazy.Not that there's really anything wrong with it.But you have heard a thousand parodies of this dialogue in American movies and TV. It is the ultra-controlled, almost emotionless, clipped dialogue with just the right sort of - what appears to Americans as - upper-class accents. Declarations of love that are always completely controlled. NO ONE loses control This movie is probably enjoyable for English audiences. But for American audiences who have heard these dialogues parodied a million times, it seems just SO stereo typically English, so very, very Noel Coward.