SYNOPSICS
Brief Encounter (1974) is a English movie. Alan Bridges has directed this movie. Richard Burton,Sophia Loren,Jack Hedley,Rosemary Leach are the starring of this movie. It was released in 1974. Brief Encounter (1974) is considered one of the best Drama movie in India and around the world.
On one of their usual weekly commutes into the city, two perfect strangers--Dr Alec Harvey, an esteemed suburban doctor, and Anna Jesson, a middle-class housewife--will inadvertently find love, when a bit of dirt enters Anna's eye and the good doctor comes to her rescue. Despite both being married to others, this fleeting but powerful interaction will prepare the ground for an unforeseen erotic but unconsummated love affair, as one clandestine rendezvous leads to another. Where is this intense emotional infidelity heading?
Same Actors
Same Director
Brief Encounter (1974) Reviews
Should Have Been Briefer...
Remakes (and sequels) have been a staple of Cinema from the beginning of the media. It is pretty much a hit or miss venture though. If you take what's good of the original and build upon it and update key features too current standards, you can have a success. Note, such films like THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (1924/1940) or KING KONG (1933/2005) succeeded in their attempts. Others like KING KONG (1976) fail, miserably. BRIEF ENCOUNTER (1945) is the template for this film. It is as perfect as could be made on such a subject and we rate it IMDb**********Ten. The story is simple, Love, innocently found by accident and tragically lost. Why, it just happened for the two (2) principals involved at the wrong time. These are portrayed in a convincing and sensitive manner by TREVOR HOWARD and CECILIA JOHNSON. Neither are conventionally leading Star material, but quality Character Actors. For the details watch the film. Now what went wrong? A T.V. Movie, remade practically scene for scene with name actors RICHARD BURTON and SOPHIA LOREN should have at least scored IMDb******Six. Both actors though appear disinterested, just showing up to punch their time-clocks and pick up their checks. Neither are involved with their characters or with each other. You do not believe they are in Love or when they finally separate it is any great loss to either of them. That should not be and that's why it fails in its intent. Sometimes it is just better to leave things alone.
Ghastly and pointless remake
BRIEF ENCOUNTER is a ghastly and pointless remake of the 1945 David Lean classic, which was based on Noel Coward's play "Still Life". A doctor removes a particle of grit from a woman's eye at a railway station, he is in a miserable relationship, she is happily married social worker of Italian ancestry. They meet by accident on another occasion, form an instant attraction and arrange to meet each other every Wednesday. The pair fall in love, but after spending a few afternoons together they realise that they have no realistic chance of happiness and agree to part. Coward's original one-act play concerned two ordinary people who fall in love. Sophia Loren and Richard Burton, two Super Stars and veterans of Hollywood Epics, are nobody's idea of 'ordinary people'. Loren in particular is miscast - Sophia Loren in full make-up, looking like a million dollars, working as a part-time voluntary social worker at a Citizen Advice Bureau just doesn't ring true. Burton, looking haggard, with dyed hair, too much make-up and wearing platform shoes, doesn't come across as your average General Practitioner. That said, you can't really blame them for having an affair after seeing their spouses. Burton is married to a literary critic who spends her evenings penning poisonous reviews and who treats her husband with total contempt. Loren's husband, Jack Hedley, potters around the house all day and is terminally boring: the most exciting thing he has ever done is nearly have an affair six years previous. Their final scene together will induce nausea, ("You've been a long, long way away", etc.). That great British jobbing actor, John LeMesurier, has a three minute cameo as Burton's friend, and appears to be slightly inebriated, speaking his lines in a barely audible voice. It's a sad and forgettable performance in a dismal, awful rehash of a cinema classic. Avoid at all costs.
Unnecessary. See the original.
To adapt and update a film that needs no adaptation is one thing. To entirely miss the point of the original film is another. The main flaw is Sophia Loren. I do not mean to suggest anything wrong with the actress herself – she is simply miscast in this film. Loren is far too gorgeous and exotic-looking for the role. What makes Brief Encounter so heart-breaking is that Celia Johnson, although she grows more attractive as the film continues, is not movie-star pretty. We could therefore easily believe – indeed, we know – that the affair is the most exciting event of her life, that it is the closest her life will ever come to resembling a Hollywood film. With Loren, we could more easily believe that she had once been a model who enjoyed many glamorous affairs before settling down, and she was now indulging in a bit of nostalgia. This leads to another problem: the original Brief Encounter is about love, this is about indulgence. Johnston's character was a housewife with too much time to spare, whereas Loren's character is a social worker. Her dalliances therefore have genuine consequences. Perhaps this could have made the film more interesting, but it instead it makes the film less of a love story and more of a rebuke to the selfish and the self-indulgent. It may have been different if we really believed Loren's character really loved Burton's character, but it seems more likely she was looking for a fun distraction from an admirable job she wasn't especially passionate about. I could find other flaws, but I will leave it at this: See the original. It cuts to the heart where this film leaves a scratch. If you love the original and want to see more of its kind, see A Man and a Woman or Before Sunrise/Sunset. Brief Encounter most likely inspired these lovely films, but they tell the classic story of a chance meeting turning into a love story charmingly and effectively.
Flat film.
Unremarkable and unmemorable remake of an old, celebrated English film. Although it may be overly maligned as a total disaster (which it is not), it never builds any tension and betrays its TV origins. Richard Burton sleepwalks through his role, and Sophia Loren's closed (in this movie) face doesn't display much passion, either. (**)
Interesting shots of rural England, but nothing much more!!
Is it the age we live in, or is it that objectively this is a slow-moving quaint view of the 50's England? Sophia Loren is lovely as usual, and you can't help but think that this film was also a commentary on her private life. Her husband, Carlos Ponti, produced this film. A much older man, he must have had to face the dilemma featured in this movie often. And the answer was obviously always the same: the allure of a sexually titillating romance could not be overcome for a victim of WWII the wonderful stability of home and family, no matter how 'boring'. Definitely a morality tale, 'Brief Encounter' is based on a Noel Coward play which I find intriguing. The movement is slow, the dialogue similarly, and you are left wondering what exactly was missing from her home life that she should turn to this fellow. It's perfectly obvious what's missing from his, when his wife barely looks up from her writing to say, "Our love slipped away so long ago, I hardly noticed it. But why is love necessary, anyhow?"