Brief Encounter

Brief Encounter, British film drama, released in 1945, that pivots on the subject of forbidden love, as set against the strictures of suburban British life. The film, based on Noël Coward’s play Still Life, was one of director David Lean’s first great successes. At an English train station, middle-class housewife Laura Jesson (played by Celia Johnson) meets the handsome married doctor Alec Harvey (Trevor Howard). A friendly conversation over tea leads to a series of...