David Lean's Brief Encounter (1954)

Brief Encounter is written by Noël Coward and based on his 1936 play Still Life. It's an impossible and unconsummated love story revealed almost entirely in flashback with the voiceover of the protagonist Laura (Celia Johnson). It begins with Laura and Alec (a GP) in a railway refreshment room where the gossipy Dolly (Everley Gregg), an obviously unwelcome acquaintance of Laura's, joins them. The whistle blows for Alec's train, he shakes Dolly's hand and discreetly presses Laura's shoulder as he makes his exit. Laura then has an odd turn, leaves the room for a moment and returns to receive Dolly's (again unwelcome) sollicitations, made even worse by her incessant chatter when the two take the train home. Clearly, a traumatic event has happened which will be revealed in the flashback.

Laura has two children and is married to Fred (Cyril Raymond), a caring but dull man who seems more interested in the Times crossword than anything else. Laura meets Alec at the station café when he removes a piece of grit from her eye. The two later meet by chance in a tea-room in Milford Junction, a town Laura visits every Thursday, and where she also takes out library books and finishes her trip by going to the cinema. At the tea-room they meticulously half the bill, including the tip, and innocently go to the cinema together: a film advert warns of the future: 'Flames of Passion coming soon'.

Alec insists that they do the same thing the following Thursday, and although Laura is initially reluctant, she turns up a the tea-room and is visibly disappointed that Alec isn't there: he's been forced away. So they meet again the following Thursday, significantly disliking the film Flames of Passion and instead hiring a rowing boat: Alec isn't very good at it and the boat gets stuck at a bridge. They are obviously falling in love, although the middle class mores of the time dictated that they should behave respectably, not allow their passion to conquer them: consequently their feelings for each other are unfulfilled, not permitted to blaze in physical terms and naturally die, nor get stronger and (horrors) lead to divorce. So they must just behave as young children – and Laura a few times sees Alec as a child: a compensatory mechanism? – and merely stick to kissing. That bridge is significant, and another will appear later: when Alec drives his love into the countryside, he takes Laura to a bridge, and on their final meeting they return to it, spending several hours there, but of course never crossing it: the film is in part about limits, and bridges can divide as much as they link.

Laura and Alec live in a hypocritical, supposedly ultra sophisticated universe where so many things are taboo, must remain unspoken. As a homosexual at a time when such activities remained illegal, Noël Coward too knew something about taboos. For the working class, though, things were different, much freer, although it's amusing to note things in their universe that wouldn't be be accepted today – the server in the refreshment room, Myrtle (Joyce Carey), who effects a none-too-convincing middle-class accent, overplays her indignance when railway worker Albert (Stanley Holloway) slaps her behind, but she is happy when Albert tells two smutty soldiers to ''Op it'.

All the same, as Alec remarks in this film about not only middle-class love but mature love: 'You're only middle-aged once!', giving him his excuse to treat them both to a champagne dinner. But society is closing in on them, they are being recognised in public, the lies start, Laura leaves a scarf in the flat of a friend of Alec's as she hastens to leave on hearing the friend returning. Things are beginning to look sordid, and the escape comes when Alec sees a chance for him to emigrate with his family, although he gives Laura the choice of deciding to tell him not to go. But now we return to that first scene in the refreshment room, the insufferable chattering of Dolly, and we see that that turn Laura had when she had to leave the room was a failed suicide attempt: it wasn't Fred or her children that prevented her from jumping but simple cowardice.

And what did Fred think of all this, had he any knowledge of what was going on? The end is ambiguous, so we don't know. What we do know though is that this is a superb film that never – well, maybe for a few moments when Laura's dreaming about Venice, etc – creaks: it shows its age of course, but it's still completely rivetting, still emotionally disturbing.