Description
Brief Encounter DVD 1945 / Directed by David Lean / Starring: Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard / Digitally remastered special edition
UPC 5037115011336
REGION 2 PAL DVD
MADE IN EU
AUDIO: English mono
Subtitles: English HOH
Total Runtime: 107 minutes
English Summary:
Brief Encounter is a 1945 British romantic drama film directed by David Lean from a screenplay written by Noël Coward, based on his 1936 one-act play Still Life.
It stars Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard, Stanley Holloway, and Joyce Carey. The film follows a passionate extramarital affair in England shortly before WWII. The protagonist is Laura, a married woman with children, whose conventional life becomes increasingly complicated following a chance meeting at a railway station with a married stranger with whom she subsequently falls in love.
Laura Jesson, 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 refreshment room, she is helped by another passenger, who solicitously removes a piece of grit from her eye. The man is Alec Harvey, an idealistic general practitioner 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 (although Alec's wife Madeleine and their two sons are unseen).
Cast:
- Celia Johnson as Laura Jesson
- Trevor Howard as Dr Alec Harvey
- Stanley Holloway as Albert Godby, the ticket inspector
- Joyce Carey as Myrtle Bagot, the cafe owner
- Cyril Raymond as Fred Jesson
- Everley Gregg as Dolly Messiter
- Margaret Barton as Beryl Walters, tea-room assistant
- Marjorie Mars as Mary Norton
- Alfie Bass (uncredited) as the waiter at the Royal
- Wallace Bosco (uncredited) as the doctor at Bobbie's accident
- Sydney Bromley (uncredited) as Johnnie, second soldier
- Noël Coward (uncredited) as the train station announcer
- Nuna Davey (uncredited) as Herminie Rolandson, Mary's cousin
- Valentine Dyall (uncredited) as Stephen Lynn, Alec's friend
- Irene Handl (uncredited) as cellist and organist
- Richard Thomas (uncredited) as Bobby Jesson, Fred and Laura's son
- Henrietta Vincent (uncredited) as Margaret Jesson, Fred and Laura's daughter
Directed by | David Lean |
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Written by |
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Based on | Still Life 1936 play by Noël Coward |
Produced by |
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Starring |
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Cinematography | Robert Krasker |
Edited by | Jack Harris |
Music by | Sergei Rachmaninoff |
Distributed by | Eagle-Lion Distributors |
Release date
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13 November 1945 (Premiere, London) 26 November 1945 (UK) |
Running time
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107 minutes |