Due to hateful weather, I shut myself in last weekend, and regrettably missed the screening of Brief Encounter. I loved the film when I first saw it several years ago, I loved it anew on my laptop today, and at the end of this survey it will probably stand as my favorite among Lean’s films (although I continue to be a great cheerleader for The Passionate Friends). But I’ve missed my chance with this film to have the grand romance and absorbing emotional experience that I’ve so far found in his work on the big screen, and I must meet this unhappy fact with stoic resignation.

So I’ve learned to face life’s disappointments from Laura and Alec, the thwarted lovers in Lean’s last and by-reputation best adaptation of a Noel Coward play. What makes Brief Encounter so powerful, and really so unsentimental, is that the ultimate rejection of their mutual desire represents more »»»

Leave it to Noel Coward to write (and direct, and star in, and produce, and compose the music for) the most charming war film ever made. It is the story of the HMS Torrin, its captain (Coward) and crew, their separate lives and their mutual, abiding love for the ship in which they serve. Told largely through flashbacks, each major character recalling significant events leading up to the sinking of the destroyer by an enemy plane as they watch it slowly disappear into the abyss, the film feels at first episodic and disjointed. It shifts in style and tone, not always satisfyingly: the long opening detailing the construction of the ship is a semi-documentary; the flashbacks are full of classic Coward romantic sparring; it features several epic battle scenes to rival any of its coevals. And at first glance the characters seem crafted from molds: the stiff-upper-lip lifetime naval officer, the humble working class patriot, the enthusiastic able-bodied young man, and the faithful women who love them.

But for all that ought to count against it, it is truly the most charming film, and sincerely so. After investing time with each character, and getting beyond initial displays of their on-deck heroism and back-home domestic rituals, they begin to emerge as dear and well-characterized individuals. As Lean puts it, Coward’s thesis was that “you ought to know what they would eat for breakfast, though you never see a scene in which they eat breakfast.” And he achieves something close to this, not merely because they are such clear stock types. Each character plays a definite role, as the film itself played a clear propagandistic role for wartime morale, but in a succession of quiet moments it earns its authenticity, then spends it all in emotional climaxes that land squarely on a viewer who wishes she had more resistance to the stuff — at least, that was my experience.

In some ways this is much more Coward’s film than Lean’s, the former having total creative control by contract and partly in fact. Lean was chosen for his technical expertise, having made a name for himself as a workhorse editor in the 1930s and gaining renown more recently for Major Barbara and 49th Parallel. Lean fought for the credit as a full co-director and was entrusted with virtually all technical and cinematic aspects of the shoot, freeing Coward to work primarily with the cast. Lean also seems to have had the ability to reign in Coward’s attachments and excesses, protesting that Coward’s initial script “would run for five hours on the screen” and winning the argument. Coward was disinterested in the process of lighting, setting up, and photographing scenes, eventually giving it up completely: “Look, my dear, you know what you are doing. I’ll leave it to you.”

At any rate, the partnership served this film well. Lean would of course go on to direct a number of Coward works solo. Coward seems to have lost interest in film after this lark (the medium had long disappointed him anyway — and me too, come to think of it — for its lackluster adaptations of his work), while Lean would soon become the preeminent British director of his generation. The film is first-rate for a debut, achieving as they set out to a fitting tribute to a ship and the lives that intersect on her deck “without sentimentality, but with simplicity and truth.”

Clearly I will have to go a bit further back to get the whole David Lean experience, to some of his best efforts as a film editor. 49th Parallel is the only one I have seen — aside, now, from this, his last credit in this capacity until his final film, A Passage to India. To this end, I will probably add Major Barbara and Pygmalion to the project at least — any other recommendations?

2008 marked David Lean’s centenary. 2009, then, would be his 101st year — a fitting time to undertake a beginner’s course in his life and work, eh? The play-on-numbers is not my own, but borrowed from the staff of the Cleveland Cinematheque, which hosts a retrospective in January and February. The Cleveland Museum of Art will also show four Lean films in February and March.

David Lean was one of the leading filmmakers of the 20th Century. He directed only sixteen feature films, in a forty-year career, yet many of these appear regularly in critics’ and filmgoers’ polls of the greatest films of all time. Five of his films appeared in the top thirty of the BFI’s Top 100 Films, voted by the film industry in 1999 – Brief Encounter was placed at number two and Lawrence of Arabia at number three. Great Expectations was placed at number five.

British Film Institute

The BFI has put together some excellent resources on Lean and his work, and their restored prints of his early films are making a tour through the US & Canada.

I will also be reading Gene Phillips’ biography of Lean, and plan to update this main post as I learn more.

Over the next two months I will try to watch all of Lean’s feature films. I have seen embarrassingly little to date, for years ignoring his most lauded works. I approach the project having seen only Brief Encounter and Summertime years ago, plus the exquisite Passionate Friends shown last month as a preview.

For any possible locals, more information on Cinematheque/Cleveland Institute of Art (CIA) screenings here and Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) screenings here.

4 Dec CIA The Passionate Friends (1949)
5 Jan CIA In Which We Serve (1942)
11 Jan CIA Brief Encounter (1945)
18 Jan CIA Great Expectations (1946)
18 Jan CIA Oliver Twist (1948)
25 Jan CIA The Sound Barrier (1952)
31 Jan CIA Summertime (1955)
8 Feb CIA The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
11 Feb CMA This Happy Breed (1944)
14 Feb CIA Dr Zhivago (1965)
18 Feb CMA Madeleine (1950)
22 Feb CIA Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
1 Mar CIA A Passage to India (1984)
4 Mar CMA Blithe Spirit (1945)
18 Mar CMA Hobson’s Choice (1954)

To commemorate David Lean’s centenary, the BFI has restored his first ten films, now touring the United States and Canada. The whole bunch play Cleveland in January and February, and I hope to catch as many as possible. Before this, I had only seen two Lean films (Brief Encounter, Summertime) and both years ago, so I’m jumping at the chance to explore his work in depth. At first I was disappointed to learn only his early films were on the schedule — I thought this would be my chance to follow through on advice to wait to see Lawrence of Arabia on the big screen (in honesty, it is the only way I would be interested in seeing the film). But after the teaser screening of The Passionate Friends, I can’t feel anything negative in anticipation of the works immediately preceding and following this unexpectedly great film.

When this film is considered at all, it is usually considered beside Brief Encounter. Indeed both are wildly romantic melodramas concerned with adultery, starring Trevor Howard, and featuring memorable scenes of public transportation. The films are superficially similar and perhaps (a rewatch will decide the matter, but now I’m rooting for Friends) Brief Encounter benefits on all counts in the comparison and is by right the remembered classic. But beyond these parallels, and despite my poor memory, my suspicion is that Passionate Friends is the darker, more mature, and more stirring of the two.

Judging by the first half hour, you would laugh to hear this film called dark. It begins in Mary’s romanticized memory — on her way to a holiday in Switzerland in advance of her husband, unaware that in the hotel’s adjoining room her first love is unpacking — recalling a New Year’s Eve nine years ago when she was still torn between them. On that night, when Mary and Steven dance and trade wishes for a happy new year, it is at first impossible to tell that they are no longer lovers. That dance leads to a brief and passionate affair — then, as in their youth, they exchange banal vows: “Will you always love me, Mary?” “Oh yes, Steven!”

But as in their first chance at happiness, Mary ultimately cannot — in her way, adamantly will not — give up what she has for his love. Her husband is a much older man, a successful banker. As they mutually understood it, they married for companionship and security, and it has suited them both. But Mary is a compelling character (amazingly vital and vulnerable in Ann Todd’s creation); she did not marry Howard Justin for his money alone. She married for her freedom. It is passionate love that takes her away from herself; becoming half of a joined soul is hateful to her, although she feels its pull in Steven’s arms; she will belong to herself, she protests vehemently. At times her actions are small and cowardly, but this is her act of bravery, enacted in a perversely roundabout way.

So the film becomes progressively darker and deeper as Mary and Steven’s paths continue to cross, that spark of something erotic and profound always between them. Twice (once truly, once mistakenly) Howard becomes aware of his wife’s infidelity, and those scenes unfold with masterful suspense and a fascinating exchange of power. Howard is not a simple man, either; he had his own reasons for marrying, and admits freely that he is afraid of losing her. Claude Rains, always so brilliant, precise, and powerful, slowly unguards his cold financier, and in his final scenes breaks your heart with his just-cracking longing and anger.

The film matures as life matures. The vapidity of the earlier dialogue takes on new significance set against the frank lust with which Mary reconsiders it, against the selfless and dispassionate choices of age, and against the terse professions of a different kind of love. It takes time to speak well of love — much more to love well.

The Passionate Friends makes much of different kinds of love, and of evolving kinds of love, making no prescriptions for them except for Mary herself. Until the right kind of love becomes clear to her, she is a divided woman, and like anyone so divided and feeling left without a choice, Mary descends into a very dark place indeed. Lean is a master of mood here, with pacing and shadowy photography turning her wandering through the London Underground into something legitimately terrifying — and I know it sounds like a facile image, but it must be recorded I started halfway out of my seat as she passed the “Way Out” sign, so perfectly aligned were the built tension, the score, her performance, the moment of my understanding &c. It is an exceptional sequence.

The resolution could not possibly be a more perfect realization of the film’s conceit and of the heroine’s needs — so perfectly right is it that, while far from the typical romantic release, I walked out of the theater on the kind of gratified high reserved for the basest “all is well — love conquers all” reflexes. Triumphant.