DVD/150: BRIEF ENCOUNTER (David Lean, 1945)

I didn't think such violent things could happen to ordinary people.

Sometimes only the film that will leave you a sodden mess at the end will do...

The greatest British film ever made?  For me, yes...

Noel Coward's adaptation of his one-act play STILL LIFE also went through Lean's collaborators Anthony Havelock-Allen and Ronald Neame.

Lean's direction is perfection - you can keep LAWRENCE or KWAI, here he shows his genius.

Gloriously shot by Robert Krasker, his images live on in the mind in tandem with Rachmaninoff's music.

Both married with children, a chance encounter between Laura Jesson and Alec Harvey leads to them falling in love, possessed by feelings that neither knew they were capable of or that they can fully acknowledge.

Victims of time, class and circumstance they snatch brief moments of happiness but it's doomed to failure by their own decency. 

Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard (in his first starring role) give two of cinema's great performances.

Shelf or charity shop?  Are you INSANE?  Johnson and Howard have a wonderful supporting cast - Stanley Holloway as Albert Godby the ticket inspector and Joyce Carey as Myrtle Bagot the 'refained' tea-room manageress are delightful as the counterpoint couple to Laura and Alec - where as they have to hide in corners, Albert and Myrtle can be as flirtatious as they like.  There are memorable performances from Everley Gregg, as Laura's garrulous acquaintance Dolly who crashes into Alec and Laura's last moments together, denying them any resolution to their sadness, and Cyril Raymond as Laura's husband Fred who, speaking the last line of the film, destroys me every time and makes me blub uncontrollably.  Anyone who thinks Coward glib need only read Laura's internal monologue to see how wrong they are...

"This can't last. This misery can't last. I must remember that and try to control myself. Nothing lasts really. Neither happiness nor despair. Not even life lasts very long. There'll come a time in the future when I shan't mind about this anymore, when I can look back and say quite peacefully and cheerfully how silly I was. No, no, I don't want that time to come ever. I want to remember every minute, always, always to the end of my days."

DVD/150: IN WHICH WE SERVE (Noel Coward / David Lean, 1942)

When producer Anthony Havelock-Allen approached Noel Coward in 1941 to make a patriotic film, Coward picked the Navy, and a fictionalised account of the recent sinking of his friend Lord Mountbatten's ship HMS Kelly.  Such a blatant propaganda piece shouldn't work - but it does.

Coward's name appears seven times in the opening credits!  He produced and wrote it, starred as the patrician Captain Kinross and composed the unmemorable score.

More importantly, first-time director Coward realised that while he could handle directing actors, he would be - ahem - all at sea with the action sequences so he gave a young editor his first chance at directing, David Lean.

An uncredited Leslie Howard announces at the start "This, is the story of a ship" and we follow the life of the fictitious HMS Torrin from construction to it sinking, watched by it's survivors as they cling to a raft.  As they wait for rescue, strafed by enemy planes, Kinross, Petty Officer Hardy and Seaman 'Shorty' Blake remember their lives back home..

Shelf or charity shop?  A definite shelf.  As I said, Coward and Lean's film stands the test of time and class snobbery to be a genuinely moving look at Briton at war.  Noel Coward won a special Academy Award citation for the film and one can imagine the effect it had on it's audience at the time. Wonderfully photographed by Ronald Neame - getting in soggy training early for his later THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE! - and Lean's editing keeps the film always moving forward.  Although Coward's writing for his working-class characters always verges on the Dickensian, it does lead to some memorable performances: Coward is his ramrod, debonair self which makes for an odd Captain but what a joy to see him in his clipped prime while among the crew, there are three actors who I usually dislike but here all deliver fine performances: John Mills as cheeky chappy 'Shorty', Bernard Miles as the stoic Hardy and the film debut of Richard Attenborough, as a stoker who abandons his post.  Keeping the home fires burning are the luminous Kay Walsh as Freda, 'Shorty's shy young wife, Joyce Carey as Hardy's no-nonsense wife Kath - her last scene is particularly moving, and the sainted Celia Johnson as Kinross' wife Alix.  This was her first feature film and, despite an accent you can etch glass with, she is magnificent, especially in her one-take speech about her acceptance of the third presence in their marriage, the Torrin.