Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #858 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-09-15
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Formats: Black & White, PAL
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 82 minutes

Synopsis
David Lean adapts Noel Coward's heartbreaking tale of two ordinary people caught up in the extraordinary power of love. Laura (Celia Johnson) is a seemingly happy, middle-class housewife who meets the equally married physician Alec (Trevor Howard) at a London railway station, and so begins a chaste but passionate affair.

Customer Reviews

When you feel like British, no other film will do as well
The basic story is of a brief encounter between two people (Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson) at a train station. Both are married to other people and are committed to different lives. They fall in love; but it is a hopeless situation.
How will they resolve this?
Will they resolve this?
What would you do in the situation?

This film reminds me of a line I heard in another movie, he, "We will never have happiness." She, "Then we must be happy without it."

David Lean did an exceptional job of directing this film whom later directed Hopscotch.
The use of Rachmaninoff's Concerto no. 2 in C minor, helps set the mood and added continuity to the film. Hear it again in the film [The Seven Year Itch (1955)].

A speck in the eye can lead to.....
Classic British cinema; acted in a way that only British actors of that period can act (1945)! Superb, the children are frightful! And should be locked in their room with no supper!!! And what is that thing they are using to keep the coffee hot? This is 1945; how the other half lived!
The flash backs, the voice over, all add to the inner tension caused by the conflict of conscience. Shall I, shall I not. What if? What will be the consequences and did the husband guess all along? It is all frightfully middle class, yet they were travelling Third Class on the train, the likes of which will never be seen again. The characters are all very vivid from the lady behind the counter - "I do not know to what you are referring", the Station Master, and the irritating friend, "No sugar?".
Just classic cinema from an era now long gone and irretrievable, but never lost because we have the DVD!!!!

Simple story of forbidden love
A simple tale of two strangers meeting in a railway station falling in love but who can never take it any further.

Some of the cinematography is beautifully done; the reflections from the train windows, the merging of the story being told in the past to the present when the narrative fades, and the symbolism of the speeding trains through the station can stand up to anything done today.

Its a well told story, with great performances by the lead actors. The self-sacrifice by each is something of an era that's gone, as we all too frequently see gratuitous sex portrayed in today's films (a reflection of the selfish society we live in).

You end up feeling for the characters, but also in a strange way relieved they did not commit adultery.