Brief Encounter, 1945
However I feel about this movie and what it may have to say about the condition of mid-20th-century British society and its middle classes' desire for stability 1945, I have to say that this is just about the most perfect six minutes of monologue (with impeccably-timed counterpoint) that I have ever seen.
I finally got to see the whole thing. Twice. And it's this good all the way through!
I finally got to see the whole thing. Twice. And it's this good all the way through!
7 comments:
I've never heard of this movie, but that scene, esp at the train station, is absolutely heart-breaking. You're right - it's beautifully done. How did you find this?
Can't remember now. I saw the clip some months ago and never watched the whole thing until now. I may have just heard the title somewhere and searched for it on youtube.
But everything about this movie is really good. The acting and script are very sharp, and there are a lot of great visual tricks (like Dolly Messiter showing up in the line of vision when Alec disappears from the refreshement room).
I think there is some debate as to the ending - what it says about the mores of the British middle class in 1945 and whether they could tolerate the kind of agency that the housewife Laura experiences in her passionate affair with the stranger - but this only makes the whole adultery/stability question even more interesting, in my opinion, since it historicizes it rather than making passion, adultery, stability, etc. these universal Rights or Wrongs. Anyway, I highly recommend it.
I'm a big fan of this movie, which Peggy and I saw at the Cinematheque in Paris in 1974. Remember the exchange when Trevor Howard asks Celia Jones (who has just shivered delicately) "Cold?" "No," she says, "not really." Pause. "Happy?" he asks. Pause. "No," she says, gazing toward the middle distance, "not really." We giggled at this display of British restraint, scandalizing the French film buffs around us who were reading the subtitles. But I won't hear a word against the Rachmaninov 2nd Piano Concerto.
Gotta add: the love affair isn't perceived by the characters as an expression of agency but as something that "happens to" them--the man puts it this way and the woman accepts his framing. Passion seizes them, but they resist, because to yield would be morally wrong; he goes off to the far reaches of Empire to expiate by helping the sick "natives," she goes back to her "ordinary English husband" and the care of her sick son, etc. They both choose Duty over Love; is it irrelevant that these mutually exclusive alternatives are posed by the gay screenwriter, Noel Coward?
rc - You're absolutely right! ("Do you realize what's happened?" "Yes") The movie is unable to frame the affair as an act of agency - their only "choice" is putting a stop to it. I guess it could be parsed: love is not an option, not a thinkable choice for the time and place, for the kind of people they are (proper British middle class in a time of real hardship, though this is also effaced).
And I suppose this could be translated to gay discourse in the following way: if you think of gay as something that happens to you, rather than something you take credit for choosing and/or accepting, then the only real option, the only way to regain control might seem to be to contain these feelings. The message being: to maintain agency, you can only choose duty, order, and control.
But in the movie's defense, that choice still feels consequential, it's not as simple as just admitting your feelings as your own, of claiming agency. How CAN you tell when your crazy feelings are right and when they are a temporary passion that you'd better just wait out? That's a level of clairvoyance that agency just doesn't give you...
Absolutely, the choice is consequential--tragically consequential. I'm reminded of an early Mary McCarthy novel in which the central character is faced with a moral dilemma; a lapsed Catholic, she has a sudden flash of realization that the right course can be identified by the fact that it's the most painful of the available options, the one she least wants to choose. This clarity gives her peace and resolution; a moment later she has a fatal car accident, but presumably dies in a state of, or like, grace, because she's seen that virtue's hallmark is self-inflicted suffering. I think the underlying assumption is that following your desire isn't agency, but repressing it for the sake of loyalty and responsibility is.
The McCarthy novel is A Charmed Life. I think the reason following your desire doesn't qualify as agency in Coward's screenplay is that it's conceived as surrender, while repression and duty demand a deliberate act of will.
Post a Comment