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Thursday, September 27, 2007 - 6:12pmSanction this postReply
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TCM & Amazon Reviews

Here is the TCM link, with future air dates.

Amazon has 58 posted customer reviews with an almost unprecedented five-star average.

"To many, Brief Encounter may seem like a relic of more proper times--or, specifically, more properly British times--when the pressures of marital decorum and fidelity were perhaps more keenly felt. In truth, David Lean's fourth film remains a timeless study of true love (or, rather, the promise of it), and the aching desire for intimate connection that is often subdued by the obligations of marriage. And so it is that ordinary Londoners Alec (Trevor Howard), a married doctor, and contented housewife Laura (Celia Johnson) meet by chance one day in a train station, when he volunteers to remove a fleck of ash from her eye (a romantic gesture that, perhaps, inspired Robert Towne's "flaw in the iris" scene in Chinatown)."


Read the rest of Jeff Shannon's Amazon review here.



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Friday, September 28, 2007 - 1:56pmSanction this postReply
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An express pulls into the station, from our angle at the level of the platform, the train slashes the shot diagonally in two, while the strains of Rachmaninoff's 2nd Piano Concerto rise as the opening score.

Celia Johnson's face conveighs incredible emotion, her eyes alone speaking more than words ever could. Trevor Howard is, as ever, the essential English Gentleman.

Both married, each struggles with the decision as to whether to consumate the affair. Johnson's charater offhandedly mentions the truth that she has been seeing a strange man as her husband does the crossword, responding "Good for you."

This well written story, from a Noel Coward play, sceenwritten and produced by him and shot by the director of Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago manages to maintain 85 minutes of taut suspense where all the action is set in drawing rooms and railway café stations and in internal dialogs. And for a black-and-white film set mlostly in small london locals, the film is goreous.

I recommend this film without qualification.

Ted Keer

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Thursday, November 15, 2007 - 6:43pmSanction this postReply
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This romantic 1945 four-star masterpiece is airing again 2:00AM Saturday morning, November 17, 2007 on TCM. Don't miss it.

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Wednesday, May 14, 2008 - 7:31pmSanction this postReply
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Sergei Rachmaninoff, Noel Coward, David Lean & Trevor Howard

all together on one stage in 1945's

Brief Encounter

Monday 19 May, 2008 TCM.

I will post my real avatar if enough people watch this film.

Please read the reviews above. The trailer below doesn't quite do the film justice.


(Edited by Ted Keer on 5/14, 10:39pm)


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