Brief Encounter (1945)

A respectable middle class married English woman (Celia Johnson in an Oscar nominated performance) has a chance encounter with a respectable middle class married doctor (Trevor Howard)  she meets at a railway station. They fall in love but their guilt keeps them from consummating their affair. Based on the play STILL LIFE by Noel Coward and directed by David Lean (LAWRENCE OF ARABIA). Considered one of the great British films of all time and one of cinema's greatest love stories. Alas, I found it a rather dull affair (both the movie and the onscreen romance). I know it's a beloved film but the unrequited passion of two bourgeois Brits accompanied by Rachmaninoff moaning on the soundtrack just didn't work for me and I suspect if this were an American film with Alexis Smith and George Brent as the would be lovers with Max Steiner droning on the soundtrack instead of Rachmaninoff, it wouldn't work for anyone else either. But it's David Lean so it's clean and impeccable and veddy veddy British and that Rachmaninoff is so tasteful that one doesn't need to feel guilty about slobbering over it. Mercifully, it's under 90 minutes so I didn't have to suffer long. I'll take BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY, thank you. Remade in 1974 with Sophia Loren and Richard Burton. With Stanley Holloway and Joyce Carey.