Companion Piece to BRIEF ENCOUNTER

Quite a beautiful film. Howard and Rains are terrific, always solid performers. I like Brief Encounter a little better, but this one is very nice, if a bit too long to my taste. I grew up knowing Lean as the epic film-maker, but he sure did some nice work in the '40s.

I definitely enjoyed this as a sort of counter-point to Brief Encounter. Claude Rains is brilliant; Trevor Howard plays a fairly humdrum role well. I found Ann Todd's performance a little uneven, though. She alternated between stammering awkardness and closed-off coldness - but managed to be consistently boring. There's a difference between glacial remoteness and stilted coldness, and she manages stilted coldness everytime. It was difficult to understand why either man wanted the colourless creature.

I found the 'reveal' ending particularly satisfying, too. It was fun to look back and see all the little hints dropped throughout the film to let us know the true state of play.

Howard finally realises he loves his wife - although this is signalled to the viewer much earlier when we see his pain at her first betrayal. He only loses his self-control three times in the whole film: when he throws Stephen out and slams the door after uncovering the first affair, when he finds out about the second 'affair' and issues the divorce papers, and when his wife mentions Stephen's name in their confrontation in the penultimate scene.

Mary finally realises she loves her husband. Again, the viewer can see in hindsight that this has always been the case. All Mary's recollections of her relationship with Stephen have an air of fantasy about them, as one reviewer said, they're more teenage daydreams than anything else. When she actually has the chance to leave Howard for Stephen during their first dalliance, to make their relationship a reality, she backs out. So much for her grand passion. Mary and Howard's interactions are notable for their lack of chemistry.

In fact, you could suggest that Mary's obsession with Stephen really serves another psychological purpose for her. We are told early on that she is afraid to 'belong' to someone else, and afraid to love. What better way to hide from her growing feelings for her husband than by fostering the idea of this lost 'true love', allowing her to remain emotionally unavailable her husband. As mentioned above, we see what a sham this 'true love' actually is when she fails to follow through on it.

The last few scenes underline this. Mary is able to draw the line under her fantasy relationship with Stephen, and walks away from him with relative equanimity. However, when her husband confronts her with how she has treated him, and finally rejects her, *this* is when she finally breaks and comtemplates ending it all.