If we are looking at the history of romance on screen, we can divide it into two distinct eras – those films that were made before Brief Encounter, and those that were made after it. This isn’t a hyperbolic way of calling this one of the greatest screen romances ever committed to film – it’s very close to an objective fact. What has become an increasingly common opinion is that David Lean and Noël Coward worked together in close collaboration to create a film that would go on to change the way audiences and the industry consumed the concept of falling in love. There were magnificent works of romance that preceded this one (particularly in the written form), but it was this particular film that became the anchor for generations of filmmakers to explore one of the most beautiful but elusive concepts that have fascinated and intimidated everyone from the most thoughtful philosophers to the creative artists that have used their platform to investigate what it means to be in love. A melancholy and deeply heartbreaking meditation on the nature of romance, told through the perspective of two profoundly unhappy people that find hope in a chance encounter with someone that they feel a connection to almost immediately, Brief Encounter is a poignant exercise in deeply moving storytelling that finds the viewer quietly observing the lives of two people who find hope in the most unexpected place, but struggle to reconcile their deep feelings of inadequacy with the realization that there is some hope, it just lies just out of their reach, which becomes the foundation of this poetic but heartbreaking deconstruction of romance, carefully put together by a pair of incredible storytellers.

Perhaps what is most interesting about Brief Encounter is its simplicity. Prior to this, the general belief was that romance needs to take place in sprawling settings, explored with an almost epic scope, and viewed as something of an adventure. Obviously logic dictates that love is not always the ultimate goal – our story doesn’t end when we’ve found a suitable partner or been able to win over the person we desire – and both Coward and Lean implicitly understood this when they set out to adapt the former’s one-act play, Still Life. The original title gives us a good understanding of our position as viewers – we are voyeurs, peering into the lives of two individuals that find themselves going against the standards of society by engaging in an affair that may be short-lived, but is far more passionate than anything they experienced in their real lives, which they see as entirely divorced from the time they spend together. Time stands still for the characters of Laura Jesson and Alec Harvey, who represent the ordinary middle-class, people who trade happiness in for comfort, believing that living a life of small luxuries and dull consistency should be the aim of any individual, or at least based on the standards we are conditioned to view as fact. Anchored by the incredible Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard, who work with the material and manage to find and expand on the smallest details, the film is a beautifully human drama about the dangers of allowing desire to overtake one’s mind and body, to the point where our entire worldview becomes governed by the quest to satiate this particular desire – not necessarily carnal cravings, but instead the yearning for a more interesting, engaging life, which becomes fundamental to the most melancholy moments of this film. 

There are certainly some themes embedded in Brief Encounter that prove that it was ahead of its time. Coward in particular was a great proponent of unsettling the status quo, and the original play, as well as his adaptation here, does a great deal to challenge what many of us consider to be normal. A film about infidelity is always going to carry around a sense of controversy even by modern standards, so producing such a story in such a social climate (whereby the Second World War had not even ended by the time the film went into production) was a risk, but one that paid off splendidly, especially in how we consider the extent to which both Lean and Coward, who were undeniably patriotic but not to the point of being blind to the flaws of their national identity, were towards the conflict and the circumstances that surrounded it. The fact that the film doesn’t romanticize the affair itself (instead being more enamoured with the idea of falling in love in general), but also refuses to vilify the two main characters who find themselves drawn into this extramarital relationship, is remarkably progressive. The cynical view is that the decision to have them separate indefinitely, likely to never see each other ever again, was done to ensure that the film doesn’t give them a happy ending (since this can be viewed as the consequences for their decision to succumb to this brief affair), but the reality is that it is simply aiming to show what many people face – not all romantic encounters are going to lead to lifelong relationships, and some people simply remain in our lives for a short time – but its the beauty that can be found in such situations that we can notice the most powerful message, which is explored with stark precision by the director throughout this film.

Without a film like Brief Encounter, it’s extremely unlikely that the concept of the romantic drama would exist in the way it does now. We still obviously get the films that contain the proverbial happy ending, and many of them are legitimately great works – but had it not been for Lean and Coward and their careful approach to plumbing the emotional depths of romance, we’d have likely not found the genre evolving into one where such stories could be told and still be satisfying. The characters at the heart of both the play and this adaptation are unhappy people, and they end the film in perhaps an even more frustrated state – the goal of Brief Encounter was not to give these characters a happy ending, but rather a slight taste of what it may feel like to have one, should such a concept even exist outside of the overly saccharine romantic novels that propose a happy marriage is the highest level of accomplishment for any functional individual – it’s what we are taught to aspire to as children, and the concept that society uses to guide its principles. Whether or not this is appropriate remains to be seen, but it has changed the way we perceive romance, seeing it as something that should be forced rather than occur naturally. Neither of the characters here were seeking out an affair, but rather found themselves falling into one by chance – had Celia not gotten a piece of grit stuck in her eye, or had Alec not been present in the coffee shop at that exact moment, it is likely their romance would not have ever occurred – and this is the most enigmatic of all the film’s many mysterious qualities, whereby it is questioning the idea of chance, showing that there is such a narrow boundary separating chance from fate, and demonstrating that life is just a series of brief moments, most of them inconsequential, but where the few meaningful ones being able to change the entire course of our lives, granted we can notice and acknowledge them when they appear.

Brief Encounter certainly changed the way we see romance when it comes to films – prior to this, these stories were bolder and far more excessive, and the ultimate intention of every character was to find a suitable partner and settle down. This was not the case here, and while many may see this story as being much sadder and more downbeat than they expected, there’s a comfort in knowing that fate only brings us certain people for a short amount of time. Some of the most long-lasting impressions are those that come about from a fleeting relationship, since it’s not always one’s physical presence that carries us forward, but their spiritual one in many instances. This is where Brief Encounter manages to be so moving, since it never seems to be intent on giving us that satisfying resolution that we’d expect, but instead provides us with a deeper and more insightful character study. Both the title of the original play and this adaptation point to the very meditative nature of the narrative, which is all about looking at a short moment in the lives of ordinary people, two unextraordinary middle-class drones that find themselves feeling a sense of incredible euphoria when presented with the chance to change themselves and the world they inhabit through engaging in a romance that brings them an abundance of joy, but also causes them to question issues much deeper than themselves. It’s an extraordinary film that has been suitably celebrated and applauded for its brilliance, compassion and undeniable warmth, which is everything a great, genre-defining film should strive to be, and exactly what Brief Encounter achieves without too much difficulty.