Brief Encounter

 

Tonight’s movie was “Brief Encounter”, a classic British, 1945, B&W movie, which touches all my movie buttons:

  British, pre-Post-WWII, tied to classical music (Rachmaninoff), and starring Celia Johnson, a Mary Astor style woman, who is instantly and completely appealing. 

She leads a normal life, and accidentally runs across an appealing man in Trevor Howard, who is a Doctor moving to Africa to conduct research.  Her husband does the Times Crosswords.

The movie revolves around the train station, where they meet.  Very Shakespearean with the comic relief provided by the waitress and the station attendant. 

It is the investigation of a delusion – that the grass is always greener on the other side. 

They have a fantasy relationship, which seems so real, even though it’s just moments out of the normal, hum-drum week.

It’s an entirely romantic, escapist fantasy film.

He says to her, on first meeting, formally, “You’re too sane and uncomplicated, but you could never be dull.”

The power of this movie,

  and it is overwhelmingly powerful, is the train scenes,

    both coming and going, as well as on board.

This is a train movie.

It is a masterpiece.