The Passionate Friends

This is David Lean returning to the subject of Brief Encounter: marriage, coincidence and a love given up. The source is H. G. Wells's novel. Mary is married to a banker but loved Steven when she was young. Years later the two meet by chance at a hotel and, inside a single day, the old question comes back. When her husband Howard finds out, it stops being a matter of infidelity and becomes an accounting of Mary's own choices. The form is notable. The narrative does not run straight; time jumps back and forth and the same event reappears at different points. Lean built this in 1949, when the structure was not common in British cinema. Ann Todd plays Mary, Claude Rains the husband and Trevor Howard the former lover. Rains's performance draws the most attention; he plays the deceived husband as neither pitiful nor cruel. Who it is for: viewers who like British melodrama built on suppressed feeling, where silence outweighs dialogue. Who it is not for: anyone expecting the impact of Brief Encounter. This is colder, more constructed and emotionally further away.