Long before he made his grand widescreen epics, master director David Lean made small, intimate films about normal people who find themselves outside of their comfort zones. His most famous of these early works - and arguably the gold standard by which all ill-fated love stories are compared - is this 86-minute treasure from 1946. It is the rather simple story of a chance meeting between housewife Laura Jesson and Dr. Alec Harvey in the refreshment room of a suburban London train station. The plot starts innocently enough when Alec removes some smut from Laura's eye, but then they inevitable become drawn to each other and fall in love.
Lean employs a flashback technique to tell the story (penned by Noel Coward along with Lean and Anthony Havelock-Allan) and actually begins with the quiet farewell between Laura and Alec. From there, Laura recalls the entire story, narrating in a breathless and at times frantic voice-over. Watching the events unfold in her memory and listening to her narration, we are drawn completely into her mind as Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto floods the soundtrack. Despite their respective marital statuses, the two begin to fall in love and soon enough, romance and even lust (at least in typically stiff upper-lip British form) have shown up on the scene. After a while, they start to meet on a very regular basis and though both know it will never work, they still spend time together.
Leave it to Lean to transcend the tendency to produce a predictably romantic and masochistic wallow and come up with a more complex set of conflicting emotions. Probably because Laura's narration is so honest and involving, this movie resonates far more than a more Baroque "chick flick" like Irving Rapper's "Now, Voyager" or Jean Negulesco's "Humoresque". Granite-jawed Trevor Howard portrays Alec with sympathy and unapologetic yearning, but it's Celia Johnson who galvanizes the film with a multi-layered performance as she makes Laura's desperation palpable but never off-putting. With her saucer eyes and emotionally pinched demeanor, she truly brings a genuine soul to this vulnerable, emotionally closeted woman who is unable to come to terms with her unconsummated affair. Providing just the right amount of comic relief are Joyce Carey as the haughty refreshment room hostess and Stanley Holloway (well before his ne'er-do-well Alfred Doolittle in "My Fair Lady") as the persistent train station attendant who constantly flirts with her.
Criterion has once again done a superb job in bringing this movie to life as the pristine print really brings out Robert Krasker's crisp cinematography. Film historian Bruce Eder provides informative audio commentary on an alternate track and goes in-depth into not only the production but also the careers of Lean, Coward and all the actors with speaking parts. Beyond that, there is the original trailer and an interesting demonstration of the restoration process. If you have seen Claude Lelouch's "A Man and a Woman" (with Anouk Aimée and Jean-Louis Trintignant) or Ulu Grosbard's "Falling in Love" (with Robert DeNiro and Meryl Streep) or Richard Linklater's "Before Sunrise" (with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy) or Sofia Coppola's "Lost in Translation" (with Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson)....you owe yourself to see the original inspiration.
Lean employs a flashback technique to tell the story (penned by Noel Coward along with Lean and Anthony Havelock-Allan) and actually begins with the quiet farewell between Laura and Alec. From there, Laura recalls the entire story, narrating in a breathless and at times frantic voice-over. Watching the events unfold in her memory and listening to her narration, we are drawn completely into her mind as Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto floods the soundtrack. Despite their respective marital statuses, the two begin to fall in love and soon enough, romance and even lust (at least in typically stiff upper-lip British form) have shown up on the scene. After a while, they start to meet on a very regular basis and though both know it will never work, they still spend time together.
Leave it to Lean to transcend the tendency to produce a predictably romantic and masochistic wallow and come up with a more complex set of conflicting emotions. Probably because Laura's narration is so honest and involving, this movie resonates far more than a more Baroque "chick flick" like Irving Rapper's "Now, Voyager" or Jean Negulesco's "Humoresque". Granite-jawed Trevor Howard portrays Alec with sympathy and unapologetic yearning, but it's Celia Johnson who galvanizes the film with a multi-layered performance as she makes Laura's desperation palpable but never off-putting. With her saucer eyes and emotionally pinched demeanor, she truly brings a genuine soul to this vulnerable, emotionally closeted woman who is unable to come to terms with her unconsummated affair. Providing just the right amount of comic relief are Joyce Carey as the haughty refreshment room hostess and Stanley Holloway (well before his ne'er-do-well Alfred Doolittle in "My Fair Lady") as the persistent train station attendant who constantly flirts with her.
Criterion has once again done a superb job in bringing this movie to life as the pristine print really brings out Robert Krasker's crisp cinematography. Film historian Bruce Eder provides informative audio commentary on an alternate track and goes in-depth into not only the production but also the careers of Lean, Coward and all the actors with speaking parts. Beyond that, there is the original trailer and an interesting demonstration of the restoration process. If you have seen Claude Lelouch's "A Man and a Woman" (with Anouk Aimée and Jean-Louis Trintignant) or Ulu Grosbard's "Falling in Love" (with Robert DeNiro and Meryl Streep) or Richard Linklater's "Before Sunrise" (with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy) or Sofia Coppola's "Lost in Translation" (with Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson)....you owe yourself to see the original inspiration.