The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

According to movies, 99% of teachers are untouchable visions of perfection. How many movies exist about "inspirational" teachers leading their students in rebellion and teaching them "individuality"? There's the sentimental pap of Goodbye Mr. Chips, the cloying Mr. Holland's Opus and the feature-length cliche Dead Poets Society. One sympathizes with Harry Flashman's turning from Rugby School to a life of lechery.

Ronald Neame's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) provides a welcome corrective. Maggie Smith's title character embodies the same attributes as Charles Chipping or John Keaton, the flighty free spirit encouraging kids at a repressive school to seek "truth and beauty." Here, however, such pedagogic eccentricity has tragic consequences.

Edinburgh 1932. Jean Brodie (Maggie Smith) returns to the Marcia Blaine School For Girls invigorated after a summer in Italy. She provides a curriculum averse to the school's conservative standards, encouraging her students to rebel against authority. Her teachings take on a disturbing turn when she upholds Mussolini as the ideal man and begins "planning" her charges lives, resulting in a terrible tragedy. Artist/ex-lover Teddy Lloyd (Robert Stephens) sees through Jean's scheming but it takes precocious pupil Sandy (Pamela Franklin) to unravel them. Waiting to pounce is Miss McKay (Celia Johnson), the strict headmistress looking to boot Brodie out.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie paints a chilling portrait of teacher as fascist. Brodie's teachings don't turn the girls into freethinkers but cliquish, bullying brats. Certainly Brodie's actions amount to brainwashing, convincing her charges to worship her, disobey parents and teachers, and shape them into extensions of herself. She plans to turn pretty Pamela (Diane Grayson) into Teddy's lover and convinces nebbish Mary McGregor (Jane Carr) to join Franco's Fascists in Spain. Only the headstrong Sandy won't go along with her plans. It's a disturbing twist on a familiar archetype, recasting the free spirit as dangerous demagogue.

Maggie Smith handles her challenging role beautifully, growing more repugnant as the plot unspools. Smith gives Jean the right mixture of charm, impertinence and arrogant unreality. Groggy favorite Celia Johnson (Brief Encounter) makes a formidable opponent. Pamela Franklin gives a striking turn as a girl Brodie turns too mature much too fast. Robert Stephens (The Duellists) and Gordon Jackson (Tunes of Glory) have marginal roles. As McKay's secretary, saucer-eyed Ann Way makes a disturbing impression without saying a word.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a disturbing piece of work. A great teacher is a wonderful, inspiring thing, but there are plenty of films about them. It's more interesting (and disquieting) to ponder a pedagogue less beneficially benevolent. If nothing else, you shant look at Dead Poets Society the same way again!

The Odessa File

Frederick Forsyth's intricate, well-plotted thrillers have proven attractive to film makers, and surprisingly, most of the adaptations have been successful. Fred Zinnemann's The Day of the Jackal (1973) is an unusually faithful screen adaptation, resulting in a brilliant film that nearly equals the book. The Dogs of War (1980) took significant liberties with the source material, but still produced a highly-entertaining movie. (Granted, I have yet to see The Fourth Protocol (1987).)

Which brings us to The Odessa File (1974), one of a string of Nazi refugee films from the '70s (Marathon Man, The Boys From Brazil). Ronald Neame's serviceable adaptation of Forsyth's second novel has the advantage - and disadvantage - of being based on a not-that-great book, but the screen version only accentuates the novel's flaws while adding new ones.

West Germany, 1963. Journalist Peter Miller (Jon Voight) comes across the diary of a dead Jew, Solomon Tauber, who committed suicide. Miller finds that Tauber had been interned in Riga Concentration Camp during World War II, under the brutal control of SS Captain Eduard Roschman (Maximilian Schell). Miller's search for Roschman brings him to the attention of Israeli spies, who want him to infiltrate ODESSA - a clandestine organization of ex-SS officers - and sabotage their involvement in Egypt's rocket program. Unfortunately, ODESSA quickly sees through Miller's disguise and targets him for elimination.

The Odessa File's intriguing premise is largely unrealized. Some of the fault is Forsyth's, for wedding borderline-superfluous elements (the Israeli-Egyptian subplot, Miller's annoyingly-conventional motivation) to an interesting main story. Neame and screenwriters Kenneth Ross (who scripted Jackal) and George Markstein, however, also share part of the blame. The novel could well have been improved upon, but the film's changes serve merely to remove the story's edges, resulting in a wholly conventional thriller with few surprises and little imagination.

Neame amps up the action and violence, inserting and rearranging scenes to little positive benefit. Miller goes from an intrepid reporter to an unlikely action hero, a reasonable-enough route; more objectionable is reducing his motivation to a personal vendetta. Miller's naggy girlfriend (the pretty Mary Tamm) has a lot of screen time but little to do; a menacing assassin is easily disposed-of. The already tacked-on subplot of ODESSA scientists helping Nasser's rocket program in Egypt, is even more superfluous in the film, scarcely mentioned after the pre-credits scene. Dramatic economy is something this film sorely lacks.

The climax highlights a major issue. Miller and Rouschman's meeting is good enough, but lacks the visceral anger - and unconventional conclusion - of Forsyth's equivalent scene; it's an all-too-typical action finale. Miller's eloquent anti-Nazi speech is excised, bringing a major issue into a sharp relief: the film isn't interested, as Forsyth was, in exploring post-war Germany's ambivalence towards Nazism; it merely wants to use the Nazis as a colorful backdrop. On one level, this is fair enough - not every movie can be deeply political - but in so doing, it neuters one of the things Forsyth did get right, removing depth and imagination for predictable drama.

Neame's direction is competent visually, but on top of its other faults, the film's pace is slow and often disjointed. Some scenes are staged with power, particularly the Holocaust flashbacks, but the movie is often static and only fitfully gripping. Having Andrew Lloyd Webber (!) score is another mistake; his very funky, '70s-sounding score often clashes with the tense and serious atmosphere - particularly an ill-advised Christmas theme song (!?!) sung by Perry Como.

Jon Voight does well, making Miller a credible and compelling protagonist. Maximilian Schell (Cross of Iron) is excellent in what amounts to an extended cameo. Mary Tamm is pretty but ill-used; Maria Schell is excellent in her small part. Derek Jacobi (Day of the Jackal) and Noel Willman (Doctor Zhivago) also feature.

Ultimately, The Odessa File is a major disappointment. The book is no literary masterpiece but has virtues and depth that the film lacks; the result is a bland, by-the-numbers thriller, especially weak compared to other Forsyth adaptations.

RIP Ronald Neame

Another showbiz legend passes away, this time Ronald Neame, who died yesterday at the age of 99.

Neame was a skilled cinematographer who worked on Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail, and also collaborated with David Lean during the latter's Cineguild days: In Which We Serve, This Happy Breed and Blithe Spirit were all photographed by him, he was production manager on Brief Encounter and tweaked many of Lean's scripts. However, Neame was also a prolific director in his own right: I love his Alec Guinness collaborations, The Horse's Mouth and Tunes of Glory, and he also directed the much-beloved The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Scrooge and The Poseidon Adventure.

RIP Mr. Neame.

Great Expectations

David Lean's Great Expectations (1946) is a richly made but problematic film. The gorgeous photography and incredible art direction are belied by clogged-drain pacing and a pair of naff leads. A huge pitfall in adapting something as expansive as a Charles Dickens novel is that much is inevitably lost in transition, and Great Expectations is no exception.

Pip (Tony Wager) is the adoptive son of a blacksmith (Bernard Miles) who accidentally runs into Magwitch (Finlay Currie), an escaped convict, and shows him kindness before he is arrested. Pip comes under the tutelage of the deranged Miss Haversham (Martita Hunt), becoming entranced by her adoptive daughter Estella (Jean Simmons), whom Miss Haversham advises to "break his heart". Years later, helped by a mysterious benefactor, Pip (John Mills) travels to London to become a gentleman, reacquainting himself with childhood chum Herbert Pocket (Alec Guinness) and Estella (Valerie Hobson), as diffident as ever. At the same time, however, he discovers his benefactor is none other than Magwitch - whom Pip must smuggle out of the contrary when the authorities show up.

Great Expectations is unquestionably gorgeous to watch: from Guy Green's striking black-and-white photography to John Bryan and Wilfred Singleton's striking art direction - most notably, the cemetery and marshes early on, and Miss Haversham's vast, cob-web enshrouded mansion, it's a truly beautiful film, reveling in period detail and costumes. The famous opening scene, where Pip encounters Magwitch in a fog-shrouded graveyard, is brilliant, bravura film making at its best. It's much more ambitious than the beautiful but modest Brief Encounter, giving the first hint of the man who would become the pre-eminent director of epics. On a purely artistic level, Lean's film is quite an achievement. In other areas, however, it's highly problematic.

Attempting to compress a Dickens novel into a film is no easy task; compressing it into a two hour film, however, is even trickier. The written-by-committee script (including Lean, his Cineguild buddies Anthony Havelock-Allan and Ronald Neame, Cecil McGivern and Lean's wife Kay Walsh) struggles to make sense of Dickens' jumbled, episodic narrative, with an uneasy flow and sluggish pace, with little connection between scenes. Character development is marginal, with Pip's unsatisfactory narrative filling in gaps and telling us what Lean and Co. seem incapable of expressing - most notably, Pip's supposed conversion to a "snob" and Estella's change of heart. Without the introspective capabilities of a novelist, things just seem to happen, and the result is largely unsatisfactory.

The cast is wildly hit-and-miss. John Mills is badly miscast as Pip, stiff as ever and way too old for the part. Valerie Hobson (Kind Hearts and Coronets) is equally one-note as Estella, easily bettered by the radiant young Jean Simmons. In his first film role, Alec Guinness is unusually colorless. Martita Hunt (Becket) and Finlay Currie (Ben-Hur) shine in the two most colorful roles. The supporting cast includes such fine actors as Francis L. Sullivan (Oliver Twist), Bernard Miles (In Which We Serve), Ivor Barnard (The 39 Steps) and Freda Jackson (A Canterbury Tale).

Ultimately, Great Expectations is a mixed bag. Lean would do a much better job of it with Oliver Twist two years later, creating a Dickens adaptation that works as a film, both artistically satisfying and entertaining.

In Which We Serve

In case you've been getting tired of John Ford reviews, I give you a refreshing change of pace with... David Lean. (You weren't expecting Pier Paolo Pasolini, I hope?)

In Which We Serve (1942) was playwright-actor Noel Coward's tribute to the men and women serving Britain during World War II - specifically, in this instance, the Royal Navy. Coward produced, wrote, directed, composed the music for, and starred in the film, but he found solo direction rather a chore, and turned to skilled editor David Lean for help, drafting other talent - including the blokes in our header, Anthony Havelock-Allan and Ronald Neame - for further assistance. Thus, cinema history (and a Groggy obsession) was made.

In Which We Serve is a well-made war time flag-waver that's inevitably dated in spots, but the good (and occasionally great) easily outweighs the bad. Its heavy-handed patriotism might be grating to some modern viewers, but on the whole it holds up as a piece of entertainment and a fine film. The film boasts solid co-direction by Lean and Coward, a great cast of up-and-coming British talent, and a story that successfully balances wartime heroics with home-front melodrama.

The HMS Torrin, a Royal Navy destroyer, is sunk off the coast of Crete in 1941. The survivors of the crew, clinging to a life raft, reminisce about their history with the ship. Captain E.V. Kinross (Noel Coward) is a straight-laced captain who becomes a father figure for the men, moulding them into a cohesive fighting unit. Other cast members include Alix (Celia Johnson), the Captain's long-suffering but devoted wife; Shorty Blake (John Mills), who falls for sailor's niece Frida (Kay Walsh); and Walter Hardy (Bernard Miles), who loses his wife (Joyce Carey) in an air raid.

For a war-time propaganda film, In Which We Serve has an admirable strain of realism about it, which makes it that much more compelling. On paper, it's nothing more than a typical piece of flag-waving melodrama, but Coward and Lean make a great deal out of the material, utilizing a then-novel flashback structure to move the story along and connect the two strands. The movie works as a fairly gritty war film, and the melodrama is tastefully handled; no mawkish, unearned sentimentality . It successfully shows the effects of war, from the day-to-day grind of sailors risking their lives as a matter of routine, to civilians anxiously waiting for war to end - and becoming helpless targets themselves. The emotion is understated in the stereotypically British way, yet comes across all the better for it.

It appears that Coward was responsible for most of the movie's quiet character scenes, while Lean directed the action scenes and location sequences; however much this may be true, the two mesh perfectly. The film's direction is finely crafted if not particularly striking, the actors well-handled and the action scenes well-edited and staged with aplomb. If the film isn't a master-class of direction, it's handled well-enough to support the material, and as we all know, Lean would go on to bigger and better things.

Noel Coward, casting himself against type, gives an admirably restrained serious turn. He's a bit stiff at times, but in other scenes (particularly his farewell to the crew) Coward provides marvellous pathos and subtlety. The rest of the cast is full to bursting with soon-to-be famous talent, many of them destined to become Lean regulars: John Mills and Kay Walsh would reteam as lovers in This Happy Breed; Celia Johnson, already in Brief Encounter mode, gives a beautiful monologue about the travails of a sailor's wife; Bernard Miles (Great Expectations) provides dignity, humor and quiet sadness; James Donald rehearses his doctor's role for Bridge on the River Kwai; and Joyce Carrey (Blithe Spirit) and John Box (Kwai) also put in appearances. A very young Richard Attenborough can be seen as a shell-shocked sailor.

In Which We Serve is a fine war film and an auspicious debut for David Lean. As Coward intended, it's a perfect tribute to the British military, and its mixture of realism and emotion allows it to hold up reasonably well.

Tunes of Glory

Ronald Neame's Tunes of Glory (1960) is a wonderful character study and drama. Depicting a clash of wills amongst two very different military officers, it features Alec Guinness at his very best. Perhaps the best part of the movie, however, is John Mills, giving a career-best performance.

Lt. Col. Jock Sinclair (Alec Guinness) is the carefree, lackadasical commander of a battalion of Scottish garrison troops - until straight-laced Colonel Barrow (John Mills) arrives to take over. Barrow is a strict disciplinarian, but completely unable to connect with his men - and his officers and men are divided between the new Colonel and Sinclair, who declares war against Barrow's authority. After Sinclair strikes a piper (John Fraser) who is romancing his daughter (Susannah York), Barrow is faced with a decision - whether or not to discipline Sinclair. Barrow decides to exonnerate Sinclair, hoping to curry favor with his officers - but he finds himself more isolated than ever.

Tunes of Glory is a top-notch character drama focusing on two damaged and disturbed people. Both men are horribly insecure individuals, with their neuroses manifesting in dramatically different ways. Jock is an outgoing Scotsman, bristling with bonhomme and charming vulgarity - a very un-military Colonel - but haunted by his wayward daughter, his shaky relationship with an actress (Kay Walsh) and fears of inadequacy. Barrow, on the other hand, is a lonely, isolated Englishman whose only refuge is his uniform. The clash between the two men is told in broad but effective strokes. Jock sees Barrow's disciplinary attitude as a threat to his frivolous, insecure nature, and engages in none-too-subtle bullying to bring Barrow around. Barrow, isolated by the loss of his wife and traumatic experiences in the late war, sees Jock's clique of friends as the determinate of his popularity; nevermind the rest of the officers, who have reasons to dislike both officers. Standing coldly above this is the devious Major Scott (Dennis Price), the Iago of the piece, who lurks in the background dispensing destructive advice to Barrow while undermining Jock's authority. In the denouement, both officers end up being destroyed: Barrow dying by his own hand, and Jock driven mad by his complicity in Barrow's death. The movie stumbles a bit with Jock's over-the-top ending lecture, but generally remains solid throughout.

Ronald Neame (The Horse's Mouth, also with Guinness and Kay Walsh) provides fairly straightforward but effective direction, handling his case well and gorgeously capturing the Scottish highlands. Shot in gorgeous Technicolor by Arthur Ibbetson, the movie stands out from most of its contemporaries, the drab, black-and-white "kitchen sink" dramas. Malcolm Arnold contributes a rousing march score making full use of Scots bagpipes.

Alec Guinness is a favorite of this blog, and his skillful performance should come as no surprise. Aside from a somewhat naff Scottish accent, Guinness's performance is marvellous, showing Jock as both the blustering Colonel and the petty, insecure man. Even more impressive is John Mills, decidedly not a favorite of this blog; he does a wonderfully subtle job capturing Barrow's loneliness and neuroses, his descent into isolation and madness painfully convincing. Dennis Price (Guinness's nemsis in Kind Hearts and Coronets) has a showy supporting role as the cold-hearted Major who plays Jock and Barrow against one another, and Susannah York makes a fine first impression in her film debut. Supporting actors include John Fraser (El Cid), Gordon Jackson (The Great Escape), Percy Herbert (Bridge on the River Kwai), Alan Cuthbertson (The Guns of Navarone) and another Groggy favorite, Kay Walsh (This Happy Breed).

Although not a perfect film, Tunes of Glory is a skillful, perfectly acted character drama. In its exploration of military comraderie and the inherent neuroses, it is almost without peer.

The Horse's Mouth

The Horse's Mouth (1958) presents the great Sir Alec Guinness at the pinnacle of his career. Having become a star through the early films of David Lean and the quirky, immensely popular Ealing comedies, Guinness was an international superstar after his Oscar-winning role in Lean's Bridge on the River Kwai, and for a few years had his name above the title in films like Our Man in Havana, Tunes of Glory, and HMS Defiant. Guinness produced, co-wrote, and starred in this adaptation of Joyce Cary's novel, one of his finest achievements.

Gulley Jimson (Alec Guinness) is an eccentric, vulgar, misanthropic amateur painter who is struggling to make ends meat. When he divorced his wife (Renee Houston), she took all of his paintings to settle a debt. His former patron, A.W. Alabaster (Arthur Macrae), won't return his calls (well, most of them are vulgar and threatening). Gulley finds a patron in Sir William Beeder (Robert Coote), who commissions him to make a wall mural. Aided by a cast of silly characters - his coarse but loving mistress Dee Coker (Kay Walsh), an obnoxious sculptor (Michael Gough), an air-headed model (Gillian Vaughan) and Nosey (Mike Morgan), a naive admirer of his - Gulley struggles to fulfill his artistic desires in spite of everything.

Like many great comedies, The Horse's Mouth places its plot secondary to the characters, particularly Gulley. It has the anarchic spirit of Guinness's Ealing films, building on and arguably surpasses it. Like Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp, Jacques Tati's Monsieur Hulot, Peter Sellers' Inspector Clouseau, Rowan Atkinson's Mr. Bean, and other classic comedy figures, Gulley bumbles from one situation to another; however, it is not naive clumsiness (for the most part), but deliberate design. Gulley flaunts societal rules and weasels his way into high society, taking advantage of societal politeness to get what he wants. Unlike most such characters, however, he has a goal - to create art. It makes him short-sighted, narrow-minded, and arrogant - as he realizes in a brief moment of clarity - but that hardly matters to him. Even when Gulley becomes recognized for his work towards the end, he remains unsatisfied. Whether Gulley is a great artist is not the point (and he's pretty obviously not) - it's something he has to do, and he'll do much anything to express himself.

Alec Guinness shows his full talent as an actor and comedian. His biggest asset as an actor is his versatility - he can play any character, regardless of class, position, personality, time period, even race and gender. Witness his eight-way performance in Kind Hearts and Coronets, his demented Professor Marcus (The Ladykillers), the mild-mannered criminal Holland (The Lavender Hill Mob), the naive idealist Sidney Stratton (The Man in the White Suit). And those are just his Ealing films. Guinness is an amazing actor, able to alter his appearance, voice, and the most subtle of mannerisms to create a whole new persona. Not only is Guinness a great actor, but also a fabulous comedian - able to use his abilities to create unforgettably amusing characters.

Gulley Jimson is a fascinating character. Not every actor could have pulled it off, but Guinness does so brilliantly. Guinness makes full use of his abilities - the raspy voice, which he alters at appropriate moments, his gestures and movements, which range from broad slapstick flailing to subtle facial and hand gestures. The supporting cast is good, particularly Kay Walsh at her Cockney best and Michael Gough's obnoxious sculptor - but it's Sir Alec's show the whole way.

The Horse's Mouth is a film that must be seen to be enjoyed. Its wonderful mix of anarchic, irreverent yet playful humor and one of the best performances by one of cinema's greatest actors will be a treat for any film fan.

Brief Encounter

David Lean's Brief Encounter (1945) is rightfully regarded as one of the best melodramas ever filmed, and the director's first masterpiece. Although I might argue that Blithe Spirit is his first truly great film, that was mostly due to the source material and the cast. This economical adaptation of Noel Coward's Still Life shows Lean coming into his own as a director. He certainly has help from a talented crew, a fine screenplay and two wonderful leads, but Lean can claim credit for the quality of the overall product. Rarely has a romance film been so brutally, simply honest about its subject matter.

Laura Jesson (Celia Johnson) is a typical middle-aged British housewife who meets handsome Dr. Alec Harvey (Trevor Howard) at a train station. The two bump into each other by accident several times afterwards and continue to see each other, realizing that they've fallen madly in love. Laura tries to keep her affair from her stuffy husband (Cyril Raymond), but finds herself overwhelmed by guilt, unable to look friends and neighbors in the eye. Despite her efforts to break off the affair, Laura finds her feelings for Alec far too strong.

Brief Encounter mostly works on account of its marvellous simplicity. At 86 minutes, it flies by, and aside from the subplot with station work Joyce Carrey and bumptious engineer Stanley Holloway (characters who played a much larger role in Coward's play, but are largely superfluous here), wonderfully focused and free of fat. It is a simple story of two middle aged people seized by something "violent", a feeling of love beyond their control or experience.

The movie's two main characters are wonderfully drawn. Laura is a wonderful mother and loving wife, but finds her boring husband unsatisfying; certainly, compared to her glamorous paramour he's a nonentity. (Their relationship, with him indifferently scribbling in a crossword puzzle while she ponders her infidelity, is almost identical to the Robert Mitchum-Sarah Miles marriage in Ryan's Daughter.) Laura finds herself torn apart, unable to reconcile with her inexorable guilt with her passionate attraction, compounded by her increasing lies and deception to her husband and friends. Alec is a very ambiguous character; as we see him almost entirely from Laura's point-of-view (aside from the brief scene where he tries to hide Laura from a flatmate (Valentine Dyall)), it's hard to tell his motives. Is he genuinely in love with Laura, or does he just see her as a fling? Either way, something is surely there, something that neither knew could exist in real life, and both are shocked by it.

The affair between the two leads isn't really tawdry as such - so far as we can tell Alec and Laura never consummate their relationship, and in that sense it remains "innocent". Still, the poignancy and intensity of their mutual affection is always evident; it's clear that their "middle-class morality" has prevented either from experiencing true affection rather than marriage of necessity, appearance or security. Maybe I'm just a stuffy moralist, but I find the film's ending both sad and wonderfully cheerful - the truly loving husband, not the glamorous, mysterious romantic, gets the woman. He can't satisfy her more passionate wants, but he is who she ultimately "needs" as a husband. This must have been a very pertinent dilemna to Lean, he of the tumultuous private life, and certainly as relatable as Ibsen's A Doll's House to countless couples living in frayed and perhaps loveless marriages the world over.

Lean's direction is extraordinary. After three relatively minor films, he has finely honed his cinematic skills. He shows a marvellous, well-developed camera eye and attention to detail of teh sort that would become his trademark in later years. Robert Krasker's moody, emotional makes striking use of deep focus, shadow and Dutch angles; along with Laura's narration, the film often more reminiscent of a noir rather than a melodrama. The use of an all-Rachmaninoff score is wonderfully realized, adding a poignant, emotional commentary to the proceedings.

The movie also benefits wonderfully from its two leads. Though Celia Johnson had been in two of Lean's early films, she and Trevor Howard were all but unknown at the time. The supporting cast is mostly iffy - Stanley Holloway and Joyce Carrey's "artificial Cockneys" are painfully annoying, Cyrill Raymond and Valentine Dyall are fine but have little screen time - but the two stars easily carry the film themselves, giving marvellously understated and realistic performances.

Celia Johnson is a marvellous actress. In virtually all of her roles she embodied the typical, middle-class British woman, cheerful, devoted, beautiful (if a bit frumpy) and loving, but with a frisson of dissatisfaction and unease. Her shock and mixed emotions about falling in actual love, her guilt, betraying her family, are perfectly and subtly portrayed. She would be largely typecast in this part on film, with The Captain's Paradise allowing her to break out of her assigned role and have some much-needed fun. But it's Laura that she'll be remembered for, and with good reason: this is Johnson's career-defining performance, and her best.

Equally impressive is Trevor Howard. Despite a lengthy career in American and British cinema, appearing in a plethora of classic films (The Third Man, Gandhi), Howard never really got his due as a great actor, yet another sign of cinematic injustice. This is not quite his best performance - his fiercely moral Father Collins in Lean's later Ryan's Daughter or the inept, ruthlessly arrogant Lord Cardigan in the 1968 Charge of the Light Brigade takes that prize - but it's certainly a brilliant, near-perfect turn by an actor then with little experience. He makes Alec ambiguous and uncertain, both romantic and forward, charming yet with an undertone of distrustfulness.

Brief Encounter is not a perfect film by any means, but it's a powerful emotional experience and a fine work of cinematic art. It may not be the best romance ever filmed, but it's certainly deserving of its high reputation.

Rating: 8/10 - Highly Recommended