Brief Encounter

What begins as a chance meeting in a railway-station tearoom becomes a cherished weekly tradition for saucer-eyed Celia Johnson’s prim-and-proper suburban housewife and Trevor Howard’s charming-but-married doctor as they share furtive lunches, trips to the cinema, and an afternoon of rowboating. It all seems so innocent until… Set to the swelling strains of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2, David Lean’s Noël Coward adaptation is nothing less than one of the most achingly romantic films ever made. It’s also a piercing dissection of the psychology of an extramarital affair that lays bare the human heat lurking beneath stiff-upper-lip British reserve.