When I first borrowed Brief Encounter from my school library in my early teens, I ended up watching it three times, I think, before returning it. I watched it one of these times and maybe twice in the company of even younger siblings and they found it equally absorbing. It may seem surprising that the story of a love affair between two middle-aged married people should have such an effect on those too young to grasp its implications fully, as my sisters certainly were even if I was not, but maybe it’s because, more than unsatisfied love, the film is about deep emotional suffering. It depicts desperate unhappiness that can be told to no-one and for which there is no help except the possibility that it will fade with time but even that is difficult to imagine.
There are scenes in the film that depict pure misery like the time when Laura runs down the road in the rain after an attempted tryst with Alec at his friend’s flat is thwarted by the unexpected arrival of the friend.
I know it was stupid to run but I couldn’t help myself. I felt so utterly humiliated and defeated and so dreadfully, dreadfully ashamed
Children as much as adults can experience unhappiness that cannot be shared and they can feel sympathy for the sadness of others even when they don’t fully understand its cause. It suffices to look at Celia Johnson’s wide tragic dark eyes and hear her haunting voice, more expressive even than her words, to be moved by her sense of deep despair.
The failed tryst at the flat represents the closest the pair ever come to consummating their affair and I have read modern interpretations that tend to emphasise this point with reference to the restrictive social conventions of the time. That however is not the point of the film which is rather to show that emotions such as Laura experiences are not restrained by any social conventions. To put it in Laura’s own words
I have fallen in love. I’m an ordinary woman. I didn’t think such violent things could happen to ordinary people.
But the film implies that it could happen to anyone, even the present filmgoer who like Laura, might be in town watching the movie after having done the weekly shopping.
Could they have prevented it, Laura wonders? It seems unlikely. The irony is that the pair begin to realise their feelings for each other whilst Alec is explaining to Laura his interest in preventive medicine.
However their passion is like pneumoconiosis only in that it begins with a bit of coal dust. Unlike the various industrial diseases whose names Alec gradually starts to pronounce almost caressingly, it is neither the consequence of clearly identifiable conditions nor does it follow a predictable course. One of the working class characters at the teashop, who provide a source of comic relief in the film, luridly remarks when Laura is struggling with the grit in her eye that someone lost the sight of one eye after a similar experience. Yet it would hardly have been possible to anticipate the sort of blindness that actually ensues.
I was reminded of the film years later when reading Chekov’s short story A Misfortune, in which Sofya, a respectable young wife and mother is alarmed to discover that she has fallen madly in love with a young man and equally that her values do not suffice to restrain her passion. On the brink of infidelity, she desperately tries to confide in her husband but he fails to understand the nature of her feelings and simply recites platitudes about morality. The narrator remarks that
There are a great many opinions in the world, and a good half of them are held by people who have never been in trouble.
In contrast to most of his Russian, European and British contemporaries Chekov does not routinely punish or condemn immoral behaviour 1. Instead the story concludes with the Sofya slipping away at night to meet her lover
She was breathless, hot with shame, did not feel her legs under her, but what drove her on was stronger than shame, reason, or fear.
Likewise it is the uncontrollable nature of her emotions that seemed to override all she believed was important to her that Laura finds so terrible. Thoughts of her children and husband are neither able to impede her enjoyment in spending time with Alec nor her thoughts of suicide after Alec has left for ever when she stares at the tracks with wild eyes and her hair strewn over her face, even the camera uncharacteristically tilted emphasising her loss of control:
I meant to do it Fred! I really meant to do it!
The irony in Laura’s case is she thinks that her husband would have been capable of understanding a problem such as hers but he is only one in whom she can never confide.
I do not know whether “in trouble” is a faithful translation of Chekov’s Russian original but interestingly it is also the expression used by the sympathetic Doctor Mandelet in Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening to describe Edna’s predicament following her adulterous affair
“It seems to me, my dear child,” said the Doctor at parting, holding her hand, “you seem to me to be in trouble.”
Although Edna, unlike Laura, feels “neither shame nor remorse” concerning her actions, ultimately she too is obliged to consider social conventions for the sake of her children and her trouble arises from her inability to reconcile them with her desire for freedom, leading her to drown herself as a way out.
Yet the Doctor characterises her situation in a similar way to Chekov, who was a physician himself, seeking to free her from blame
“Nature takes no account of moral consequences, of arbitrary conditions which we create, and which we feel obliged to maintain at any cost.”
The “cost” in 19th century novel of immorality is usually death but despite allusions with the railway settings and the scene where Laura thinks of falling in front of a train to Anna Karenina, by the mid-20th century to punish such conduct with death would seem to “take rather a Victorian view” of it (as Laura’s husband Fred remarks when Laura discusses her concerns about a naval career for her son). Yet in other respects attitudes towards their conduct seem unchanged despite apparently increased understanding about such matters by that time.
One wonders what the Doctor would have told Edna had she confided in him instead of killing herself, for he observes
I know I would understand. And I tell you there are not many who would—not many, my dear.
That’s also the case for Laura and Alec. Besides the impossible option of Laura’s husband, there is no one to whom they can turn for help. Forced to sit opposite an annoying woman whom we later learn has inadvertently ruined her last moments with Alec, Laura thinks
I wish I could trust you. I wish you were a wise, kind friend instead of a gossiping acquaintance I have know casually for years and never particularly cared for.
But other, closer, friends, prove equally inaccessible. Mary Norton is happy to back Laura up in “the most appalling domestic lie” when she believes it to have an innocent purpose but looks on with gleeful curiosity when she catches Laura with Alec at a posh restaurant; whilst Alec’s friend and the flat owner Stephen Lynn, though a physician and, seemingly, a man of the world, displays an attitude of mocking disapproval that does not invite confidences 2.
In stark contrast is the response of the boatman who helps them when Alec falls into the water after a stolen outing on a boat. Laura remarks
You know, the British have always been nice to mad people. That boatman thinks we are quite dotty. Look how sweet he has been.
It’s maybe a hint to the viewers as to how to regard Laura and Alec’s conduct. As a sort of madness, which is undesirable, but for which they are not to blame and which should therefore be met with sympathy rather than condemnation3.
And although Laura feels unable to confide in her husband, what makes Fred special is that like the boatman, or like children, he seems to able to understand and be kind without needing to know.
Cyril Raymond’s sensitive performance, which makes the viewer care about Fred whilst still showing how he may fail to satisfy Laura in some respects, elevates the ending beyond the obligatory conclusion demanded by the conventions not so much of society as of film of that time, making it bearable both for Laura and the viewer. Fred may not be all that Laura’s heart desires but in a judgmental world his kindness makes him worth coming back to.
- For instance his famously inconclusive story "The Lady With The Toy Dog" / "The Lady With the Dog" ends, contrary to most 19th century fiction, neither with the death of the adulterous couple nor their spouses but with the realisation by the lovers that they need to find a solution to their situation but "to both of them it was clear that the end was still very far off, and that their hardest and most difficult period was only just beginning."
- I have found it curious that flat episode is supposedly inspired Billy Wilder's film The Apartment in which allows office executives to use his flat for their illicit affairs, since far from providing such a space, Alec's friend strongly disapproves of his conduct and demands his key back. Interestingly that is the only scene in the film which is not shown from Laura's perspective and does not form part of her narrative.
- In that respect it is not unlike films of that era which sought to normalise mental illness particularly in women. Indeed the platform parting scenes are reminiscent of the famous farewell scene between Bette Davis and Paul Hendried in *Now Voyager*, a film which besides showing a woman's experience of recovering from a nervous breakdown also sympathetically depicts her forbidden love for an unhappily married man.