Brief Encounter

Brief Encounter
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	David Lean
Produced by	Noël Coward Anthony Havelock-Allan Ronald Neame
Written by	Noël Coward Anthony Havelock-Allan David Lean Ronald Neame
Based on	Still Life 1936 play by Noël Coward
Starring	Celia Johnson Trevor Howard Stanley Holloway Joyce Carey Cyril Raymond Everley Gregg Margaret Barton
Music by	Sergei Rachmaninoff
Cinematography	Robert Krasker
Edited by	Jack Harris
Distributed by	Eagle-Lion Distributors (UK) Universal Pictures (US)
Release date	26 November 1945 (UK)
Running time	86 minutes
Country	UK
Language	English
Budget	$1 million

Brief Encounter is a 1945 British romantic drama film directed by David Lean about British suburban life, centring on Laura, a married woman with children, whose conventional life becomes increasingly complicated because of a chance meeting at a railway station with a stranger, Alec. They inadvertently but quickly progress to an emotional love affair, which brings about unexpected consequences.

The film stars Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard, Stanley Holloway and Joyce Carey. The screenplay is by Noël Coward, based on his 1936 one-act play Still Life. The soundtrack prominently features the Piano Concerto No. 2 by Sergei Rachmaninoff, played by Eileen Joyce.

Brief Encounter was met with wide praise from critics upon its release, and is today considered to be among Lean's finest works. It has been credited as an important early work of realist cinema for its small scale and the lack of big-name stars in its cast.

In the latter months of 1938, Laura Jesson (Celia Johnson), a respectable middle-class British woman in an affectionate but rather dull marriage, tells her story while sitting at home with her husband, imagining that she is confessing her affair to him.

Laura, like many women of her class at the time, goes to a nearby town every Thursday for shopping and to the cinema for a matinée. Returning from one such excursion to Milford, while waiting in the railway station's tea shop, she is helped by another passenger, who solicitously removes a piece of grit from her eye. The man is Alec Harvey (Trevor Howard), an idealistic doctor who also works one day a week as a consultant at the local hospital. Both are in their late thirties or early forties, married and with children.