1 00:00:05,000 --> 00:00:07,000 (RUMBLING) 2 00:00:07,040 --> 00:00:09,040 (TRAIN ROARS) 3 00:00:09,080 --> 00:00:11,080 (TRAIN WHISTLE) 4 00:00:11,120 --> 00:00:13,120 (RUMBLING) 5 00:00:15,120 --> 00:00:17,120 6 00:00:21,360 --> 00:00:25,720 Brilliantly, daringly, heartbreakingly, 7 00:00:25,760 --> 00:00:28,960 Brief Encounter begins with the end. 8 00:00:29,000 --> 00:00:33,720 In a crowded platform cafe, there is talk everywhere. 9 00:00:33,760 --> 00:00:36,600 But we are not listening to a word. 10 00:00:36,640 --> 00:00:39,280 The camera closes in on a couple, 11 00:00:39,320 --> 00:00:42,520 who don't appear to be speaking at all. 12 00:00:42,560 --> 00:00:45,720 Their faces tell us everything. 13 00:00:45,760 --> 00:00:48,240 (PLATFORM BELL CLANGS) 14 00:00:48,280 --> 00:00:50,120 There's your train. Yes, I know. 15 00:00:50,160 --> 00:00:53,200 DOLLY: Aren't you coming with us? No, I go in the opposite direction. 16 00:00:53,240 --> 00:00:54,920 My practice is in Churley. Oh, I see. 17 00:00:54,960 --> 00:00:56,840 I'm a general practitioner at the moment. 18 00:00:56,880 --> 00:00:58,680 Dr Harvey's going to Africa next week. 19 00:00:58,720 --> 00:01:01,960 Oh, how thrilling. TANNOY: '..platform four is the 5:40 20 00:01:02,000 --> 00:01:04,680 for Churley, Leigh Green and Langdon.' 21 00:01:04,720 --> 00:01:06,800 We are constantly told by the characters 22 00:01:06,840 --> 00:01:09,440 how ordinary they are - their lives are ordinary. 23 00:01:09,480 --> 00:01:11,320 Yet he's a doctor, a handsome doctor, 24 00:01:11,360 --> 00:01:13,039 and she's this beautiful woman. 25 00:01:13,080 --> 00:01:15,280 And the film gets to have it both ways. 26 00:01:15,320 --> 00:01:17,840 They are movie stars. 27 00:01:17,880 --> 00:01:19,880 They are tremendously attractive. 28 00:01:19,920 --> 00:01:22,240 They are full of the glamour of the big screen, 29 00:01:22,280 --> 00:01:26,360 yet they are also representing middle-class lives. 30 00:01:26,400 --> 00:01:30,400 And you can see it both ways and feel it both ways. 31 00:01:30,440 --> 00:01:33,560 You know, that famous line that Celia Johnson says about 32 00:01:33,600 --> 00:01:36,800 not knowing that such violent things happen to such ordinary people. 33 00:01:36,840 --> 00:01:39,000 And the way that it is filmed, 34 00:01:39,039 --> 00:01:41,920 especially in, you know, in their kind of love affair, 35 00:01:41,960 --> 00:01:45,400 or quasi love affair, you know, when they go rowing in a boat, 36 00:01:45,440 --> 00:01:48,200 and they have these moments - they go to the cinema together. 37 00:01:48,240 --> 00:01:50,320 These are really beautiful cinematic moments 38 00:01:50,360 --> 00:01:52,520 that do have a touch of glamour to them as well. 39 00:01:52,560 --> 00:01:54,840 I must go. Yes, you must. 40 00:01:54,880 --> 00:01:56,880 Goodbye. Goodbye. 41 00:01:59,280 --> 00:02:01,280 (TRAIN BRAKES SCREECH) 42 00:02:03,360 --> 00:02:05,760 (TRAIN WHISTLE SHRIEKS) 43 00:02:07,040 --> 00:02:09,039 (SUSTAINED SHRILL WHISTLE) 44 00:02:12,280 --> 00:02:14,760 (TRAIN RUMBLING) 45 00:02:18,880 --> 00:02:20,880 (RUMBLING FADES) 46 00:02:22,240 --> 00:02:24,600 47 00:02:55,280 --> 00:02:59,120 As Alec and Laura, Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson 48 00:02:59,160 --> 00:03:02,960 are whispering their final farewell - 49 00:03:03,000 --> 00:03:06,000 two married people, who have met by chance 50 00:03:06,040 --> 00:03:08,760 and fallen desperately in love. 51 00:03:08,800 --> 00:03:11,240 They are doing the right thing. 52 00:03:11,280 --> 00:03:14,920 The film is all the more tragic because of it. 53 00:03:14,960 --> 00:03:20,240 The greatness of Brief Encounter lies in these human contradictions - 54 00:03:20,280 --> 00:03:23,480 duty versus passion, 55 00:03:23,520 --> 00:03:26,480 decency versus desire, 56 00:03:26,520 --> 00:03:29,960 the head versus the heart. 57 00:03:30,000 --> 00:03:32,000 (ROMANTIC ORCHESTRAL MUSIC) 58 00:03:32,040 --> 00:03:34,520 Do you think we shall ever see each other again? 59 00:03:35,960 --> 00:03:38,440 I don't know. Not for years anyway. 60 00:03:39,640 --> 00:03:41,640 The children will all be grown up. 61 00:03:43,320 --> 00:03:45,840 I wonder if they'll ever meet and know each other. 62 00:03:45,880 --> 00:03:48,480 Couldn't I write to you, just once in a while? 63 00:03:48,520 --> 00:03:50,520 No, Alec, please. You know we promised. 64 00:03:51,400 --> 00:03:53,160 Well, alright, dear, 65 00:03:53,200 --> 00:03:55,200 I do love you, so very much. 66 00:03:56,320 --> 00:03:58,320 I love you with all my heart and soul. 67 00:04:01,600 --> 00:04:03,600 I want to die. 68 00:04:04,880 --> 00:04:06,880 If only I could die. 69 00:04:06,920 --> 00:04:08,920 If you died, you'd forget me. 70 00:04:08,960 --> 00:04:11,360 I want to be remembered. 71 00:04:11,400 --> 00:04:13,440 Yes, I know. I do too. 72 00:04:14,560 --> 00:04:17,720 It's one of those film and sets of performances 73 00:04:17,760 --> 00:04:20,120 that is very easy to caricature - 74 00:04:20,160 --> 00:04:23,840 and in fact has been caricatured many, many times. 75 00:04:23,880 --> 00:04:26,760 But it's impossible to emulate. 76 00:04:26,800 --> 00:04:30,920 And the reason is because of the truth of those performances 77 00:04:30,960 --> 00:04:34,240 and the unbelievable sort of accuracy 78 00:04:34,280 --> 00:04:37,880 of the social conventions that they are bound by. 79 00:04:37,920 --> 00:04:43,000 There isn't a false note in this film from start to finish. 80 00:04:45,800 --> 00:04:47,800 (SOMBRE ROMANTIC MUSIC) 81 00:04:58,520 --> 00:05:00,360 (THINKS) 'Fred. 82 00:05:00,400 --> 00:05:02,080 Fred. 83 00:05:03,040 --> 00:05:05,560 Dear Fred. 84 00:05:05,600 --> 00:05:07,600 There's so much that I want to say to you. 85 00:05:08,680 --> 00:05:10,680 You're the only one in the world 86 00:05:10,720 --> 00:05:13,320 with enough wisdom and gentleness to understand. 87 00:05:14,480 --> 00:05:16,960 If only it were somebody else's story and not mine. 88 00:05:18,280 --> 00:05:21,680 As it is, you're the only one in the world that I can never tell. 89 00:05:22,520 --> 00:05:24,680 Never, never. 90 00:05:24,720 --> 00:05:27,680 Because even if I waited until we were old, old people 91 00:05:27,720 --> 00:05:29,720 and told you then, 92 00:05:29,760 --> 00:05:32,520 you'd be bound to look back over the years and be hurt. 93 00:05:33,520 --> 00:05:35,560 And, oh, my dear, I don't want you to be hurt.' 94 00:05:36,560 --> 00:05:38,280 Celia Johnson of course, 95 00:05:38,320 --> 00:05:40,800 right in the middle of it, right at the heart of it, 96 00:05:40,840 --> 00:05:44,320 confessing all to her husband in her head, 97 00:05:44,360 --> 00:05:50,360 who is about as heartbreaking as a human being can be, 98 00:05:50,400 --> 00:05:53,000 you know, without actually falling apart on screen. 99 00:05:53,040 --> 00:05:54,720 She's so wonderful in it. 100 00:05:54,760 --> 00:05:57,120 There is absolutely no doubt at all 101 00:05:57,159 --> 00:06:00,120 why Coward and Lean wanted her. 102 00:06:00,160 --> 00:06:02,440 Absolutely superb performance - 103 00:06:02,480 --> 00:06:05,720 unmatched, I would say, in British cinema. 104 00:06:05,760 --> 00:06:09,640 Because it's so beautifully detailed 105 00:06:09,680 --> 00:06:12,320 and is so understated. 106 00:06:12,360 --> 00:06:15,920 The way she says, "I want to die. 107 00:06:15,960 --> 00:06:19,080 Why can't I die?", at the end, 108 00:06:19,120 --> 00:06:20,840 you go... (GASPS) 109 00:06:20,880 --> 00:06:22,880 You know, and you think it's... 110 00:06:22,920 --> 00:06:24,640 it's skipped over, 111 00:06:24,680 --> 00:06:26,800 and yet you know she really means it. 112 00:06:26,840 --> 00:06:29,200 Very few people could get away with that. 113 00:06:29,240 --> 00:06:31,880 114 00:06:35,240 --> 00:06:37,240 (UPBEAT NEWSREEL MUSIC) 115 00:06:41,280 --> 00:06:44,720 NORTH AMERICAN NEWSREADER: 'School opening means evacuation 116 00:06:44,760 --> 00:06:46,640 for more thousands of London children, 117 00:06:46,680 --> 00:06:49,880 and despite the long recess from Adolf Hitler's object lessons, 118 00:06:49,920 --> 00:06:51,720 the city hasn't had a raid in months. 119 00:06:51,760 --> 00:06:54,760 But authorities demand that even hardened campaigners 120 00:06:54,800 --> 00:06:56,760 go to the country, just in case. 121 00:06:59,880 --> 00:07:03,680 Back in London, there are thousands of children who won't go. 122 00:07:03,720 --> 00:07:05,960 They use the new playgrounds the Nazis made 123 00:07:06,000 --> 00:07:09,280 when they killed thousands of children last school year.' 124 00:07:09,320 --> 00:07:12,520 Though the film was written in 1936, 125 00:07:12,560 --> 00:07:15,960 and is set approximately in the late-'30s, 126 00:07:16,000 --> 00:07:21,240 the privations and sacrifices of World War II bleed into the drama. 127 00:07:21,280 --> 00:07:24,120 This is a story about doing the right thing, 128 00:07:24,160 --> 00:07:27,120 whatever the temptation, whatever the cost. 129 00:07:27,160 --> 00:07:32,440 Though far more internalised, there is an echo of Casablanca. 130 00:07:32,480 --> 00:07:35,560 Standing by your man would have had far more weight 131 00:07:35,600 --> 00:07:37,600 when the film was released. 132 00:07:37,640 --> 00:07:40,159 Women would have seen themselves in Laura. 133 00:07:42,159 --> 00:07:44,360 The film's title, Brief Encounter, 134 00:07:44,400 --> 00:07:47,920 is really the product of Noel Coward looking at what they'd done - 135 00:07:47,960 --> 00:07:49,880 they'd taken a year's story and compressed it 136 00:07:49,920 --> 00:07:51,760 into a brief period of time, into a few weeks. 137 00:07:51,800 --> 00:07:53,480 And he said, "Well, this is very brief." 138 00:07:53,520 --> 00:07:56,320 And one of his assistants said, "It should be Brief Encounter." 139 00:07:56,360 --> 00:07:58,600 This is something that, particularly in World War II, 140 00:07:58,640 --> 00:08:01,720 with soldiers home on leave for brief moments of romance, 141 00:08:01,760 --> 00:08:03,440 the idea of a brief encounter 142 00:08:03,480 --> 00:08:05,680 was very much in the culture at that particular point. 143 00:08:05,720 --> 00:08:08,360 It was a common slang phrase. So that worked really well. 144 00:08:08,400 --> 00:08:11,800 And for 1944, I think, very radical 145 00:08:11,840 --> 00:08:13,920 that what it's about is 146 00:08:13,960 --> 00:08:16,720 you may get married, as Celia Johnson's character has, 147 00:08:16,760 --> 00:08:18,440 and you may be happily married. 148 00:08:18,480 --> 00:08:22,160 That doesn't mean to say that desire no longer exists, 149 00:08:22,200 --> 00:08:24,600 that you might meet someone on a railway platform - 150 00:08:24,640 --> 00:08:26,640 and desire springs up again. 151 00:08:26,680 --> 00:08:29,160 And we all might experience that. 152 00:08:29,200 --> 00:08:32,919 It's a message to everyone that she's not unique 153 00:08:32,960 --> 00:08:34,960 and Trevor Howard isn't unique. 154 00:08:35,000 --> 00:08:36,880 That idea of who human beings are. 155 00:08:36,919 --> 00:08:38,720 We're complicated creatures. 156 00:08:38,760 --> 00:08:41,720 Yes, and I think part of both the casting 157 00:08:41,760 --> 00:08:45,400 and the sort of framing of the film - of these people being ordinary - 158 00:08:45,440 --> 00:08:47,720 is such a key part of that because it's, 159 00:08:47,760 --> 00:08:49,760 you know, leaning into this idea of 160 00:08:49,800 --> 00:08:52,240 the people that were watching these films could go, 161 00:08:52,280 --> 00:08:55,920 "Oh, I see something of myself in that," even if it's just glimmers. 162 00:08:55,960 --> 00:08:58,360 And David Lean later said that part of the reason 163 00:08:58,400 --> 00:09:01,040 that British audiences loved the film so much was because 164 00:09:01,080 --> 00:09:05,360 they did see something they felt was real on the screen. 165 00:09:05,400 --> 00:09:09,160 And I mean I think that's the crux of it, ultimately. 166 00:09:10,800 --> 00:09:15,080 Directed by David Lean, cinema's great romantic, 167 00:09:15,120 --> 00:09:17,120 and written by Noel Coward, 168 00:09:17,160 --> 00:09:20,920 this is a love story about unfulfilled love, 169 00:09:20,960 --> 00:09:24,520 a film lit up by two peerless performances 170 00:09:24,560 --> 00:09:28,600 that describe an entire world beneath the surface - 171 00:09:28,640 --> 00:09:32,120 a film that was radical for its day, and has grown into 172 00:09:32,160 --> 00:09:36,760 one of the most celebrated and debated romances ever made: 173 00:09:36,800 --> 00:09:41,040 an attempt to decipher what it means to be in love. 174 00:09:41,080 --> 00:09:43,000 (TRAIN WHISTLE) ALBERT: I'll have to be moving. 175 00:09:43,040 --> 00:09:44,720 The 5:40 will be in in a minute. 176 00:09:44,760 --> 00:09:47,120 MYRTLE: Who's on the gate? Young William. 177 00:09:47,160 --> 00:09:49,160 (TRAIN CHUGGING) 178 00:09:54,000 --> 00:09:56,000 (RATTLING) 179 00:09:59,480 --> 00:10:01,160 (TRAIN WHISTLE) 180 00:10:02,000 --> 00:10:04,000 (RATTLING FADES) 181 00:10:07,001 --> 00:10:09,000 (TRAIN RATTLING) 182 00:10:09,040 --> 00:10:11,040 (TRAIN WHISTLE) 183 00:10:12,080 --> 00:10:14,080 (SUSTAINED RATTLING) 184 00:10:22,040 --> 00:10:24,080 Oh, please, could you give me a glass of water? 185 00:10:24,120 --> 00:10:26,760 I've got something in my eye and I want to bathe it. 186 00:10:26,800 --> 00:10:29,640 Would you like me to have a look? Oh, no, don't trouble. 187 00:10:29,680 --> 00:10:31,680 I expect the water will do. Thank you. 188 00:10:31,720 --> 00:10:33,440 A bit of coal dust, I expect. 189 00:10:33,480 --> 00:10:35,320 A man I knew lost the sight in one eye 190 00:10:35,360 --> 00:10:37,080 through getting a bit of grit in it. 191 00:10:37,120 --> 00:10:38,960 Nasty, very nasty. Better? 192 00:10:39,000 --> 00:10:42,000 I'm afraid not. Ooh! Can I help you? 193 00:10:42,040 --> 00:10:44,160 Oh, no, please, it's only something in my eye. 194 00:10:44,200 --> 00:10:46,800 Try pulling your eyelid down as far as it'll go. 195 00:10:46,840 --> 00:10:48,960 And then blow your nose. Please let me look. 196 00:10:49,000 --> 00:10:51,400 I happen to be a doctor. Oh, that's very kind of you. 197 00:10:51,440 --> 00:10:53,440 Turn round to the light, please. 198 00:10:53,480 --> 00:10:55,160 Now look up. 199 00:10:56,720 --> 00:10:58,720 Now look down. 200 00:11:00,400 --> 00:11:03,000 Keep still. I see it. 201 00:11:05,080 --> 00:11:07,080 There. Oh, what a relief. 202 00:11:07,120 --> 00:11:09,120 It was agonising. Looks like a bit of grit. 203 00:11:09,160 --> 00:11:11,440 From when the express went through. Thank you very much. 204 00:11:11,480 --> 00:11:13,160 (PLATFORM BELL) There we go. I must run. 205 00:11:13,200 --> 00:11:15,560 How lucky for me you were here. Anybody could have done it. 206 00:11:15,600 --> 00:11:17,400 Never mind, you did, and I'm most grateful. 207 00:11:17,440 --> 00:11:19,120 There's my train, I must go. Goodbye. 208 00:11:19,160 --> 00:11:22,440 Goodbye. TANNOY: '..Leigh Green and Langdon.' 209 00:11:28,040 --> 00:11:31,440 The film is set in the fictional London suburb of Milford. 210 00:11:31,480 --> 00:11:36,080 The crucial scenes were shot here at Carnforth Station in Lancashire. 211 00:11:36,120 --> 00:11:38,120 And for dramatic reasons - 212 00:11:38,160 --> 00:11:40,040 this was 1944, 213 00:11:40,080 --> 00:11:44,120 when the peril of Nazi bombs still loomed large, 214 00:11:44,160 --> 00:11:49,320 and, in particular, the V1 and V2 rockets aimed at Greater London. 215 00:11:49,360 --> 00:11:54,080 So Lean and his production came north - officially evacuees - 216 00:11:54,120 --> 00:11:55,840 to shoot on the platforms 217 00:11:55,880 --> 00:11:58,680 and in the iconic cafe here at Carnforth. 218 00:11:58,720 --> 00:12:01,800 The steam trains flying past the platforms 219 00:12:01,840 --> 00:12:06,520 become a symbol of the fleeting nature of Alec and Laura's love. 220 00:12:06,560 --> 00:12:08,960 I think it's hard for us to imagine today 221 00:12:09,000 --> 00:12:12,200 the stresses and dangers of being in a film crew 222 00:12:12,240 --> 00:12:14,680 whilst Britain was under siege, 223 00:12:14,720 --> 00:12:18,320 particularly southern Britain, from V2 Nazi bombs. 224 00:12:18,360 --> 00:12:21,960 And so, when the entire production was actually relocated to Lancashire 225 00:12:22,000 --> 00:12:24,520 for safer filming, 226 00:12:24,560 --> 00:12:29,120 that kind of affected the trajectory and the locations 227 00:12:29,160 --> 00:12:31,240 of the film that was going to be made. 228 00:12:31,280 --> 00:12:34,120 And in fact the Carnforth Train Station 229 00:12:34,160 --> 00:12:36,040 was considered by the Ministry of War 230 00:12:36,080 --> 00:12:39,400 to be out enough of the range of the V2 bombers 231 00:12:39,440 --> 00:12:42,520 that they could have the lights on in the evening 232 00:12:42,560 --> 00:12:44,840 and sort of get around the national blackouts 233 00:12:44,880 --> 00:12:46,560 that were happening at the time. 234 00:12:46,600 --> 00:12:48,640 They assumed that would be safe for them. 235 00:12:48,680 --> 00:12:51,000 But the actual station, plot-wise, 236 00:12:51,040 --> 00:12:53,120 is meant to be suburban London, isn't it? 237 00:12:53,160 --> 00:12:54,920 It's not set in the north. 238 00:12:54,960 --> 00:12:58,480 Yeah, there are these kind of geographical gaps in the film 239 00:12:58,520 --> 00:13:01,120 in the way that there are also kind of temporal gaps. 240 00:13:01,160 --> 00:13:05,680 You get the sense that whatever the humdrum kind of vision 241 00:13:05,720 --> 00:13:09,600 of this suburban town is in the daytime, for instance, 242 00:13:09,640 --> 00:13:11,800 at nighttime it kind of becomes something else 243 00:13:11,840 --> 00:13:14,680 and becomes quite a dramatic dream space. 244 00:13:14,720 --> 00:13:17,000 And that is largely because we're seeing this 245 00:13:17,040 --> 00:13:19,760 through the flashback of a lovelorn woman. 246 00:13:19,800 --> 00:13:22,440 And so it's sort of heightened in that way as well. 247 00:13:22,480 --> 00:13:26,440 So it kind of creates this almost dream space around the station. 248 00:13:27,920 --> 00:13:31,200 Having risen out of being an editor, David Lean was on his way 249 00:13:31,240 --> 00:13:33,800 to becoming Britain's most illustrious director. 250 00:13:33,840 --> 00:13:37,800 Indeed, Brief Encounter is one of his most important films, 251 00:13:37,840 --> 00:13:41,000 but it was also made in a fruitful partnership 252 00:13:41,040 --> 00:13:43,400 with the great playwright Noel Coward. 253 00:13:43,440 --> 00:13:46,560 Their company, Cineguild Productions, 254 00:13:46,600 --> 00:13:48,880 could be compared to The Archers 255 00:13:48,920 --> 00:13:52,120 of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger fame. 256 00:13:52,160 --> 00:13:54,200 Drawing deep from their times, 257 00:13:54,240 --> 00:13:57,240 Lean and Coward made the war classic 258 00:13:57,280 --> 00:13:59,080 In Which We Serve 259 00:13:59,120 --> 00:14:03,760 and the social drama This Happy Breed with Celia Johnson, 260 00:14:03,800 --> 00:14:07,320 and sparkling comedy Blithe Spirit. 261 00:14:07,360 --> 00:14:10,920 They married an instinct for the grandeur of cinema 262 00:14:10,960 --> 00:14:13,920 with a study of Britishness. 263 00:14:13,960 --> 00:14:16,760 David Lean had entered the British film industry 264 00:14:16,800 --> 00:14:19,960 from a very early age - the age of 17. 265 00:14:20,000 --> 00:14:23,200 He joined Gaumont British Pictures first as a tea boy, 266 00:14:23,240 --> 00:14:25,120 then worked his way up to clapper boy, 267 00:14:25,160 --> 00:14:29,360 until finally getting in to the role of editor. 268 00:14:29,400 --> 00:14:32,240 He became a very, very good editor. 269 00:14:32,280 --> 00:14:33,960 He was very distinguished. 270 00:14:34,000 --> 00:14:36,600 He worked with a lot of very important people 271 00:14:36,640 --> 00:14:41,200 - Anthony Asquith, Michael Powell - and it was at that time 272 00:14:41,240 --> 00:14:45,880 that he was probably thinking about making the move into direction. 273 00:14:49,200 --> 00:14:51,720 He made Brief Encounter. David Lean had been working his way up 274 00:14:51,760 --> 00:14:53,760 through the film industry, but he'd specialised 275 00:14:53,800 --> 00:14:56,040 for a long time in editing. So he'd come in, 276 00:14:56,080 --> 00:14:59,040 essentially as a clapper boy, become an editor - 277 00:14:59,080 --> 00:15:02,560 and he was so good at editing that he became, in the 1930s, 278 00:15:02,600 --> 00:15:04,720 the highest paid editor in British cinema. 279 00:15:04,760 --> 00:15:07,680 It was something that he loved. He thought that editing was an art - 280 00:15:07,720 --> 00:15:10,400 that he knew how to pick the right framing, the right scene, 281 00:15:10,440 --> 00:15:12,120 how to emphasise the actors' qualities. 282 00:15:12,160 --> 00:15:14,120 And so in fact, for the rest of his career, 283 00:15:14,160 --> 00:15:15,960 he insisted on having the final edit. 284 00:15:16,000 --> 00:15:18,960 That was really where he made his films - in the editing room. 285 00:15:19,000 --> 00:15:21,520 But by the time we get to Brief Encounter, 286 00:15:21,560 --> 00:15:23,320 he had started to develop as a director. 287 00:15:23,360 --> 00:15:25,040 He'd worked on his first three movies, 288 00:15:25,080 --> 00:15:26,760 all of them with Noel Coward. 289 00:15:26,800 --> 00:15:29,280 Noel Coward had spotted his talents as an editor, 290 00:15:29,320 --> 00:15:31,280 got him initially to co-direct with him 291 00:15:31,320 --> 00:15:34,040 and then eventually handed over the directing duties to him. 292 00:15:34,920 --> 00:15:36,960 So tell me something about the relationship 293 00:15:37,000 --> 00:15:38,800 between Noel Coward and David Lean, 294 00:15:38,840 --> 00:15:41,320 certainly, in the early part of Lean's career, 295 00:15:41,360 --> 00:15:43,920 and certainly in the creation of Brief Encounter. 296 00:15:43,960 --> 00:15:48,360 Coward was a very established and well-known playwright in the 1930s 297 00:15:48,400 --> 00:15:50,960 and David Lean was at the beginning of his career. 298 00:15:51,000 --> 00:15:54,200 So when Coward had the idea for his first feature film, 299 00:15:54,240 --> 00:15:57,280 In Which We Serve, which he also starred in in part, 300 00:15:57,320 --> 00:16:00,520 he approached Lean and had him come in as co-director. 301 00:16:00,560 --> 00:16:03,840 And that would be both of their first screen credits as directors. 302 00:16:04,800 --> 00:16:09,600 But this created a sort of mutual creative organisation 303 00:16:09,640 --> 00:16:11,520 really between them - a production company. 304 00:16:11,560 --> 00:16:13,600 Yes. They created a production company together. 305 00:16:13,640 --> 00:16:15,440 In Which We Serve was quite successful, 306 00:16:15,480 --> 00:16:17,160 both critically and commercially. 307 00:16:17,200 --> 00:16:19,760 And they followed it up with three more films, 308 00:16:19,800 --> 00:16:21,920 based on either plays of Coward's, 309 00:16:21,960 --> 00:16:24,560 or, in the case of Brief Encounter, a one-act play. 310 00:16:24,600 --> 00:16:27,440 And so Coward became the kind of writing force 311 00:16:27,480 --> 00:16:29,240 behind Lean's direction. 312 00:16:29,280 --> 00:16:31,960 Brief Encounter began as Still Life, 313 00:16:32,000 --> 00:16:35,720 an idea all but plucked out of the air by Noel Coward. 314 00:16:35,760 --> 00:16:39,480 Lean had been toying with a period piece in Mary Tudor, 315 00:16:39,520 --> 00:16:43,080 when Coward informed him that he knew nothing about costumes. 316 00:16:43,120 --> 00:16:45,960 Ten days later, Coward returned 317 00:16:46,000 --> 00:16:49,480 and pitched him the script for Still Life, 318 00:16:49,520 --> 00:16:52,320 about a couple who meet at a train station, 319 00:16:52,360 --> 00:16:54,560 fall in love and then part. 320 00:16:54,600 --> 00:16:56,600 But Lean was unimpressed. 321 00:16:56,640 --> 00:16:58,800 It had no surprises. 322 00:16:58,840 --> 00:17:01,440 Lean made the single brilliant suggestion 323 00:17:01,480 --> 00:17:04,720 that would transform the drama of Still Life 324 00:17:04,760 --> 00:17:07,079 into the masterpiece of Brief Encounter. 325 00:17:07,119 --> 00:17:10,920 Without explanation, you start with the end. 326 00:17:10,960 --> 00:17:14,359 The film would then be Laura's recollections of events 327 00:17:14,400 --> 00:17:17,920 that would bring the audience full circle to the scene again, 328 00:17:17,960 --> 00:17:20,079 but from her perspective. 329 00:17:20,119 --> 00:17:25,359 Suddenly, the film was about memory and sacrifice. 330 00:17:27,640 --> 00:17:29,640 (INTRICATE PIANO MUSIC) 331 00:17:30,560 --> 00:17:32,280 LAURA: 'That's how it all began. 332 00:17:32,320 --> 00:17:35,040 Just through me getting a little piece of grit in my eye. 333 00:17:36,320 --> 00:17:38,360 I completely forgot the whole incident. 334 00:17:38,400 --> 00:17:40,600 It didn't mean anything to me at all. 335 00:17:42,160 --> 00:17:44,160 At least I didn't think it did.' 336 00:17:44,200 --> 00:17:46,200 (TRAIN CHUGGING) 337 00:17:49,240 --> 00:17:52,120 'The next Thursday, I went into Milford again as usual.' 338 00:17:52,160 --> 00:17:54,280 (FLOWING PIANO MUSIC) 339 00:18:01,440 --> 00:18:04,880 The play was about a doomed love affair between Alec and Laura, 340 00:18:04,920 --> 00:18:10,080 two middle-class people who meet by accident in a railway-station cafe. 341 00:18:10,120 --> 00:18:12,520 The extraordinary thing about this is that 342 00:18:12,560 --> 00:18:14,560 it is just all set in the cafe, 343 00:18:14,600 --> 00:18:18,680 and yet the essence of what was to become Brief Encounter 344 00:18:18,720 --> 00:18:20,480 is all there. 345 00:18:20,520 --> 00:18:24,160 Every single bit of dialogue that is in the play, 346 00:18:24,200 --> 00:18:26,320 which is 25 minutes long, 347 00:18:26,360 --> 00:18:28,640 actually finds its way into the film. 348 00:18:28,680 --> 00:18:33,400 What Lean and Coward and indeed Havelock-Allan did 349 00:18:33,440 --> 00:18:35,760 - because they all contributed to the script - 350 00:18:35,800 --> 00:18:37,480 was open it up, 351 00:18:37,520 --> 00:18:39,720 keeping the essential idea 352 00:18:39,760 --> 00:18:43,600 of this doomed romance intact, 353 00:18:43,640 --> 00:18:48,040 but drew in from the outside other characters, 354 00:18:48,080 --> 00:18:50,520 Laura's husband, her home life, 355 00:18:50,560 --> 00:18:54,800 their external ventures into the park 356 00:18:54,840 --> 00:18:56,840 and various restaurants. 357 00:18:56,880 --> 00:18:59,200 And yet it still, at the same time, 358 00:18:59,240 --> 00:19:03,760 it sort of spins around, pivots around this central scene 359 00:19:03,800 --> 00:19:05,840 in this railway-station cafe. 360 00:19:05,880 --> 00:19:09,680 There's something interesting about how Lean reacted to Still Life, 361 00:19:09,720 --> 00:19:11,440 in the sense that... 362 00:19:11,480 --> 00:19:14,200 a little bit of a power game maybe with Noel Coward. 363 00:19:14,240 --> 00:19:17,080 But also, he made it cinematic, didn't he? 364 00:19:17,120 --> 00:19:18,840 And it's all about structure. 365 00:19:18,880 --> 00:19:22,360 Absolutely. I think Lean had a really natural sense 366 00:19:22,400 --> 00:19:25,280 of kind of structure from his time as a film editor, 367 00:19:25,320 --> 00:19:28,560 and he was very interested in the portrayal of time in films, 368 00:19:28,600 --> 00:19:31,440 and dissolves and that sort of thing. 369 00:19:31,480 --> 00:19:34,040 And so when he looked at the content of this play, 370 00:19:34,080 --> 00:19:36,200 he thought it was brilliant and that Noel Coward 371 00:19:36,240 --> 00:19:38,720 had this incredible economy of language and dialogue. 372 00:19:38,760 --> 00:19:41,440 It was essentially the story that we know as Brief Encounter, 373 00:19:41,480 --> 00:19:44,120 about this nearly romance, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. 374 00:19:44,160 --> 00:19:45,840 It's essentially the same thing about 375 00:19:45,880 --> 00:19:49,040 these wayward, both married, middle-class people, 376 00:19:49,080 --> 00:19:51,040 who have a chance encounter 377 00:19:51,080 --> 00:19:52,760 on a train-station platform 378 00:19:52,800 --> 00:19:54,480 in a refreshment room. 379 00:19:54,520 --> 00:19:57,000 And, you know, one is a doctor and one is a housewife, 380 00:19:57,040 --> 00:19:58,960 and how they will never let themselves go 381 00:19:59,000 --> 00:20:00,680 beyond the realms of impropriety, 382 00:20:00,720 --> 00:20:04,240 exactly in this incredibly kind of beautiful 383 00:20:04,280 --> 00:20:06,280 but unconsummated affair that they have. 384 00:20:06,320 --> 00:20:08,400 LAURA: 'Just as I stepped out onto the pavement...' 385 00:20:08,440 --> 00:20:10,120 Good morning. Oh, good morning. 386 00:20:10,160 --> 00:20:11,840 How's the eye? Perfectly alright. 387 00:20:11,880 --> 00:20:14,600 How kind it was of you to take so much trouble.It was nothing. 388 00:20:14,640 --> 00:20:17,120 It's clearing up, I think. Yes, it's going to be nice. 389 00:20:17,160 --> 00:20:19,160 Well, I must be getting along to the hospital. 390 00:20:19,200 --> 00:20:21,000 And I must be getting along to the grocer's. 391 00:20:21,040 --> 00:20:22,800 What exciting lives we lead, don't we? 392 00:20:22,840 --> 00:20:24,520 BOTH: Goodbye. 393 00:20:24,560 --> 00:20:28,200 The plot is at once simple and deeply complex. 394 00:20:28,240 --> 00:20:30,680 These two people meet by chance 395 00:20:30,720 --> 00:20:35,480 when he, a doctor, plucks a mite of coal dust from her eye. 396 00:20:35,520 --> 00:20:38,720 She won't see clearly again for six weeks. 397 00:20:38,760 --> 00:20:41,520 They will meet again and again, 398 00:20:41,560 --> 00:20:45,000 random encounters becoming deliberate meetings. 399 00:20:45,040 --> 00:20:47,040 They have fallen in love, 400 00:20:47,080 --> 00:20:50,440 but we already know that it will not last. 401 00:20:50,480 --> 00:20:53,400 LAURA: 'Just after I'd given my order, I saw him come in. 402 00:20:53,440 --> 00:20:55,240 He looked a little tired, I thought, 403 00:20:55,280 --> 00:20:57,800 and there was nowhere for him to sit, so I smiled and said...' 404 00:20:57,840 --> 00:20:59,200 Good morning. 405 00:20:59,240 --> 00:21:01,120 Oh, good morning. 406 00:21:01,160 --> 00:21:02,840 Are you all alone? Yes, I am. 407 00:21:02,880 --> 00:21:05,080 Would you mind if I shared your table? It's very full. 408 00:21:05,120 --> 00:21:07,960 There doesn't seem to be anywhere else.No, of course not. 409 00:21:13,880 --> 00:21:15,880 (QUIRKY ORCHESTRAL FILM MUSIC) 410 00:21:30,760 --> 00:21:32,760 (MELODRAMATIC FILM MUSIC) 411 00:21:36,320 --> 00:21:39,400 (HIGH-PITCHED SCREAM) (CLAMOURING) 412 00:21:40,560 --> 00:21:42,560 (DRAMATIC FANFARE) 413 00:21:49,160 --> 00:21:51,160 (LOUNGE MUSIC PLAYS) 414 00:21:56,280 --> 00:22:00,280 Both Lean and Coward were set on Celia Johnson as Laura. 415 00:22:00,320 --> 00:22:02,840 A good part, she said, got her itching, 416 00:22:02,880 --> 00:22:05,320 and she knew this was a good part. 417 00:22:05,360 --> 00:22:07,800 However, she hated making films. 418 00:22:07,840 --> 00:22:11,800 That resistance, in part, is what made her so perfect. 419 00:22:11,840 --> 00:22:16,000 So much of the film is located in the landscape of her face - 420 00:22:16,040 --> 00:22:19,760 a symphony of happiness and anguish. 421 00:22:19,800 --> 00:22:24,120 She imagines she is confessing it all to her decent husband, 422 00:22:24,160 --> 00:22:26,800 but she is telling the story to herself. 423 00:22:26,840 --> 00:22:30,400 Her mellifluous, unhappy interior monologue 424 00:22:30,440 --> 00:22:32,360 carries us through the film. 425 00:22:32,400 --> 00:22:34,400 (RACHMANINOV CONCERTO SWELLS) 426 00:22:38,600 --> 00:22:42,760 Now, this film would be nothing without the two lead actors, 427 00:22:42,800 --> 00:22:46,400 essentially, and as Celia Johnson... 428 00:22:46,440 --> 00:22:49,800 Just give me an idea of what she's like as an actress 429 00:22:49,840 --> 00:22:52,880 and why you can't imagine Brief Encounter without her. 430 00:22:52,920 --> 00:22:55,720 Celia Johnson sort of holds the film together 431 00:22:55,760 --> 00:22:59,400 and the close-ups on her are just such an economical 432 00:22:59,440 --> 00:23:03,400 filmmaking technique that is so incredibly powerful. 433 00:23:03,440 --> 00:23:06,120 She's got these huge, extraordinary eyes, 434 00:23:06,160 --> 00:23:10,800 and she maintains this very kind of cut-glass accent 435 00:23:10,840 --> 00:23:12,960 and this kind of physical uprightness. 436 00:23:13,000 --> 00:23:16,320 You can kind of see her poise and her sense of dignity. 437 00:23:16,360 --> 00:23:18,240 But you also see that she's crumbling. 438 00:23:18,280 --> 00:23:20,200 You hear in her voice that she's crumbling 439 00:23:20,240 --> 00:23:22,600 and there's a real anguish that kind of runs through - 440 00:23:22,640 --> 00:23:24,840 runs really deep through her character. 441 00:23:24,880 --> 00:23:28,040 All good doctors must primarily be enthusiasts. 442 00:23:28,080 --> 00:23:31,560 They must, like writers and painters and priests, 443 00:23:31,600 --> 00:23:33,600 they must have a sense of vocation - 444 00:23:33,640 --> 00:23:35,880 a deep-rooted, unsentimental desire to do good. 445 00:23:35,920 --> 00:23:37,600 Yes, I see that. 446 00:23:37,640 --> 00:23:39,520 Obviously, one way of preventing disease 447 00:23:39,560 --> 00:23:42,520 is worth 50 ways of curing it. That's where my ideal comes in. 448 00:23:42,560 --> 00:23:45,560 Preventive medicine isn't anything to do with medicine at all, really. 449 00:23:45,600 --> 00:23:47,280 It's concerned with conditions. 450 00:23:47,320 --> 00:23:49,520 Living conditions and hygiene and common sense. 451 00:23:49,560 --> 00:23:51,760 For instance, my speciality is pneumoconiosis. 452 00:23:51,800 --> 00:23:53,480 Oh, dear. 453 00:23:53,520 --> 00:23:56,000 Don't be alarmed. It's simpler than it sounds. 454 00:23:56,040 --> 00:23:59,240 It's nothing but a slow process of fibrosis of the lung 455 00:23:59,280 --> 00:24:01,120 due to the inhalation of particles of dust. 456 00:24:01,160 --> 00:24:03,640 In the hospital here, there are splendid opportunities 457 00:24:03,680 --> 00:24:06,480 for observing cures and making notes because of the coal mines. 458 00:24:06,520 --> 00:24:08,200 You suddenly look much younger. 459 00:24:08,240 --> 00:24:09,920 Do I? 460 00:24:09,960 --> 00:24:11,680 Almost like a little boy. 461 00:24:12,600 --> 00:24:14,600 What made you say that? 462 00:24:14,640 --> 00:24:16,640 I don't know. 463 00:24:16,680 --> 00:24:19,200 Yes, I do. 464 00:24:19,240 --> 00:24:21,240 Tell me. 465 00:24:21,280 --> 00:24:23,560 We think that accent as being her normal vocal tones, 466 00:24:23,600 --> 00:24:26,440 but her daughter has said she didn't use that accent at all in real life. 467 00:24:26,480 --> 00:24:28,320 She was acting all the way through 468 00:24:28,360 --> 00:24:31,400 with this particular cut-glass class-based accent. 469 00:24:31,440 --> 00:24:36,400 So she was inhabiting that role in this incredibly modern way. 470 00:24:36,440 --> 00:24:39,480 You could almost see her as being close to a method actor. 471 00:24:39,520 --> 00:24:42,600 The camera is inches away from her face 472 00:24:42,640 --> 00:24:44,400 for the vast majority of the film. 473 00:24:44,440 --> 00:24:46,440 I mean, in a way, the film is really 474 00:24:46,480 --> 00:24:49,680 a set of close-ups of Celia Johnson. 475 00:24:49,720 --> 00:24:52,120 Probably over half of the film, if not more, 476 00:24:52,160 --> 00:24:53,840 is really just close up on her face. 477 00:24:53,880 --> 00:24:56,960 There's a critical scene in Brief Encounter - 478 00:24:57,000 --> 00:24:59,560 it's possibly the most essential scene of the movie. 479 00:24:59,600 --> 00:25:02,160 Trevor Howard is talking about his passion as a doctor 480 00:25:02,200 --> 00:25:06,680 and how he is very, very engaged by particular diseases of the lungs. 481 00:25:06,720 --> 00:25:11,040 And in that moment, as he finishes, Celia Johnson says, 482 00:25:11,080 --> 00:25:13,560 "You look very young when you were talking." 483 00:25:13,600 --> 00:25:15,480 And you can see her eyes switch. 484 00:25:15,520 --> 00:25:17,640 And at that moment, she falls in love with him. 485 00:25:17,680 --> 00:25:19,360 Now, that HAS to happen, 486 00:25:19,400 --> 00:25:22,920 because the whole film is based on this hugely accelerated romance 487 00:25:22,960 --> 00:25:24,640 and on the fact that these two people 488 00:25:24,680 --> 00:25:26,360 are prepared to risk everything. 489 00:25:26,400 --> 00:25:28,320 If you don't believe that she's in love with him 490 00:25:28,360 --> 00:25:30,640 in that very brief period of time, the film doesn't work. 491 00:25:30,680 --> 00:25:33,720 But she does it without ever explaining to the camera 492 00:25:33,760 --> 00:25:36,320 what's happening at that moment. But you see that scene, 493 00:25:36,360 --> 00:25:38,400 and you see her fall in love in a way that 494 00:25:38,440 --> 00:25:40,800 I don't think I've ever seen before or since - 495 00:25:40,840 --> 00:25:43,920 the very visible moment that a person falls in love with someone. 496 00:25:43,960 --> 00:25:47,760 Roger Livesey had been Lean's first choice for Alec, 497 00:25:47,800 --> 00:25:51,160 but when the director saw The Way To The Stars, 498 00:25:51,200 --> 00:25:53,960 he was struck by this little-known actor 499 00:25:54,000 --> 00:25:55,680 in a small part. 500 00:25:55,720 --> 00:25:57,600 With his deep, soothing voice, 501 00:25:57,640 --> 00:26:02,000 Trevor Howard's delivery of lines hinted at buried truths. 502 00:26:02,040 --> 00:26:06,080 There is something controlled about the decency of the good doctor, 503 00:26:06,120 --> 00:26:10,720 as if his passion was a sickness he cannot cure. 504 00:26:10,760 --> 00:26:13,840 The film wouldn't work quite as well without Trevor Howard of course, 505 00:26:13,880 --> 00:26:15,560 because he is the perfect partner 506 00:26:15,600 --> 00:26:18,000 for Celia Johnson in this. 507 00:26:18,040 --> 00:26:20,200 He's quiet, he's civilised, 508 00:26:20,240 --> 00:26:23,760 he's got a sort of hidden passion inside him, 509 00:26:23,800 --> 00:26:25,480 which comes out in what he does. 510 00:26:25,520 --> 00:26:27,920 He's an idealist as a doctor. 511 00:26:27,960 --> 00:26:30,840 Trevor Howard had been invalided out of the army relatively recently. 512 00:26:30,880 --> 00:26:32,560 He was making his way as an actor. 513 00:26:32,600 --> 00:26:34,240 The Way To The Stars was his first film, 514 00:26:34,280 --> 00:26:35,960 so he was very much an unknown. 515 00:26:36,000 --> 00:26:38,040 But there was something about him in that rough cut 516 00:26:38,080 --> 00:26:40,440 that David Lean saw and realised this is the man I need 517 00:26:40,480 --> 00:26:43,440 for the role of Dr Alec Harvey. He went after him. 518 00:26:43,480 --> 00:26:46,960 Initially they struggled because Trevor Howard hadn't opened his post 519 00:26:47,000 --> 00:26:49,400 and hadn't got the letter saying he'd been offered the role. 520 00:26:49,440 --> 00:26:51,560 But when he finally turned up and delivered the role, 521 00:26:51,600 --> 00:26:53,280 there was something about the way 522 00:26:53,320 --> 00:26:56,440 that he connected with Celia Johnson that was absolutely perfect. 523 00:26:56,480 --> 00:27:00,560 Lean loved to work with actors to bring out the subtle gestures 524 00:27:00,600 --> 00:27:03,200 that say so much more than dialogue. 525 00:27:03,240 --> 00:27:05,840 Both actors are superlative 526 00:27:05,880 --> 00:27:09,640 in expressing the emotional turmoil beneath the surface 527 00:27:09,680 --> 00:27:14,760 in clipped speech, brief touches, in haunted looks. 528 00:27:14,800 --> 00:27:18,040 Yet screened chemistry is ultimately a mystery. 529 00:27:18,080 --> 00:27:22,600 Why is it we believe in this romance so fully? 530 00:27:22,640 --> 00:27:24,640 (PIANO TRIO STRIKES UP) 531 00:27:30,720 --> 00:27:34,280 (Will you just look at the cellist?) 532 00:27:41,480 --> 00:27:43,640 (LAUGHS) It really is dreadful, isn't it? 533 00:27:43,680 --> 00:27:45,520 But we oughtn't to laugh. They might see. 534 00:27:45,560 --> 00:27:47,240 There should be a society 535 00:27:47,280 --> 00:27:49,640 for the prevention of cruelty to musical instruments. 536 00:27:49,680 --> 00:27:52,120 You don't play the piano, I hope? I was forced to as a child. 537 00:27:52,160 --> 00:27:55,000 You haven't kept it up? No. My husband isn't musical at all. 538 00:27:55,040 --> 00:27:56,720 Good for him. For all you know, 539 00:27:56,760 --> 00:27:59,040 I might have a tremendous burning professional talent. 540 00:27:59,080 --> 00:28:01,160 Oh, dear, no. Why are you so sure? 541 00:28:01,200 --> 00:28:03,440 You're too sane and uncomplicated. 542 00:28:04,960 --> 00:28:07,400 The central passion builds across 543 00:28:07,440 --> 00:28:11,560 secret afternoons at the pictures or boating in the park, 544 00:28:11,600 --> 00:28:14,720 involves two middle-class people - 545 00:28:14,760 --> 00:28:17,680 housewife and GP. 546 00:28:17,720 --> 00:28:21,480 They are comically contrasted with another romance - 547 00:28:21,520 --> 00:28:25,560 between the duo of salty ticket collector Stanley Holloway 548 00:28:25,600 --> 00:28:29,560 and haughty cafe manageress Joyce Carey. 549 00:28:29,600 --> 00:28:32,280 Both are evidently working class, 550 00:28:32,320 --> 00:28:36,600 though Carey is a stickler for proper behaviour. 551 00:28:38,560 --> 00:28:41,840 David Lean and Noel Coward steal a trick from Shakespeare 552 00:28:41,880 --> 00:28:44,680 for this film - steal it really from A Midsummer Night's Dream, 553 00:28:44,720 --> 00:28:46,400 where you have the rude mechanicals 554 00:28:46,440 --> 00:28:48,960 who act out a slightly farcical play, 555 00:28:49,000 --> 00:28:51,240 which mirrors the troubles of the lead characters 556 00:28:51,280 --> 00:28:53,880 on either side of them. It's a play within a play. 557 00:28:53,920 --> 00:28:55,960 And in the case of Brief Encounter, 558 00:28:56,000 --> 00:28:59,520 you have the porter and the woman who runs the refreshment room 559 00:28:59,560 --> 00:29:03,680 who are mimicking in a strange way the romance of our lead couple. 560 00:29:03,720 --> 00:29:06,600 Minnie hasn't touched her milk. Did you put it down for her? 561 00:29:06,640 --> 00:29:08,480 Yes, but she never came for it. 562 00:29:08,520 --> 00:29:11,280 Fond of animals? In their place. 563 00:29:11,320 --> 00:29:13,960 My landlady has got a positive mania for animals. 564 00:29:14,000 --> 00:29:16,440 She's got two cats, one Manx, one ordinary, 565 00:29:16,480 --> 00:29:18,280 three rabbits in a hutch in the kitchen 566 00:29:18,320 --> 00:29:20,280 - they belong to her little boy by rights - 567 00:29:20,320 --> 00:29:23,000 and one of those daft-looking dogs with hair over its eyes. 568 00:29:23,040 --> 00:29:25,080 I don't know to what breed you refer. 569 00:29:25,120 --> 00:29:27,560 (GUFFAWS) I don't think it knows itself. 570 00:29:27,600 --> 00:29:30,360 The thing to bear in mind is that 571 00:29:30,400 --> 00:29:32,840 almost no-one involved in making this film 572 00:29:32,880 --> 00:29:35,200 had lived the life they were portraying. 573 00:29:35,240 --> 00:29:37,800 So Noel Coward was a closeted gay man. 574 00:29:37,840 --> 00:29:39,760 David Lean grew up with Quakers. 575 00:29:39,800 --> 00:29:41,880 His dad left home when he was young. 576 00:29:41,920 --> 00:29:44,080 You know, Stanley Holloway, Joyce Carey - 577 00:29:44,120 --> 00:29:49,280 these people were not middle-class doctors and the wives of bankers. 578 00:29:49,320 --> 00:29:53,080 Really, the only person who had any experience of this life 579 00:29:53,120 --> 00:29:55,400 was Celia Johnson. 580 00:29:55,440 --> 00:29:57,600 But she had deliberately gone into acting 581 00:29:57,640 --> 00:29:59,880 because she thought it was something wicked. 582 00:29:59,920 --> 00:30:01,840 So this is a performance of Englishness 583 00:30:01,880 --> 00:30:04,440 created by a group of people who had never experienced 584 00:30:04,480 --> 00:30:06,160 the life they were showing you. 585 00:30:06,200 --> 00:30:08,080 And I think that's critical to understanding 586 00:30:08,120 --> 00:30:12,120 why this film is incredibly successful internationally. 587 00:30:12,160 --> 00:30:15,440 Because it isn't as English as we think. 588 00:30:15,480 --> 00:30:17,840 It's a film that really connects with America. 589 00:30:17,880 --> 00:30:19,560 It connects with America 590 00:30:19,600 --> 00:30:22,080 so much so that it's nominated for three Oscars, 591 00:30:22,120 --> 00:30:24,640 but also it really inspires American filmmakers. 592 00:30:24,680 --> 00:30:27,040 So Billy Wilder created The Apartment 593 00:30:27,080 --> 00:30:30,160 based on the apartment scene in Brief Encounter, 594 00:30:30,200 --> 00:30:33,240 which is where Alec borrows his friend Stephen's flat 595 00:30:33,280 --> 00:30:35,680 and invites Celia Johnson back. 596 00:30:35,720 --> 00:30:38,000 Billy Wilder found that so intriguing 597 00:30:38,040 --> 00:30:41,160 that he developed an entire movie based on that small sequence. 598 00:30:41,200 --> 00:30:43,680 The script is an astonishing example 599 00:30:43,720 --> 00:30:46,360 of Coward's gift for the nuance of life. 600 00:30:46,400 --> 00:30:48,920 Handed new scenes by Lean, 601 00:30:48,960 --> 00:30:52,480 Coward would tell the team to have their pencils ready, 602 00:30:52,520 --> 00:30:55,880 then pace the room pouring out the dialogue. 603 00:30:55,920 --> 00:31:01,160 There is no such thing as ordinary, or as he puts it "provincial" life. 604 00:31:01,200 --> 00:31:06,000 There is something of himself in the screenplay - and Lean too. 605 00:31:06,040 --> 00:31:11,360 This idea of a story coming close the brink of the forbidden. 606 00:31:11,400 --> 00:31:15,040 As Laura says, she and Alec are in danger. 607 00:31:15,080 --> 00:31:19,480 This is a film about the madness of falling madly in love. 608 00:31:19,520 --> 00:31:23,440 Despite its reputation as a masterwork of repression, 609 00:31:23,480 --> 00:31:25,360 the film is very funny. 610 00:31:25,400 --> 00:31:29,840 Absurdity runs on parallel tracks to the sweeping romance, 611 00:31:29,880 --> 00:31:33,080 as if fate is conspiring against them. 612 00:31:33,120 --> 00:31:37,200 The film they go to see is called Flames Of Passion. 613 00:31:37,240 --> 00:31:40,880 When boating, they become entangled in the weir. 614 00:31:40,920 --> 00:31:43,680 Their voices are constantly drowned out 615 00:31:43,720 --> 00:31:46,360 by the busybodies who cross their path. 616 00:31:46,400 --> 00:31:47,920 (ORGAN PLAYED WITH GUSTO) 617 00:31:59,760 --> 00:32:01,440 It can't be! 618 00:32:03,440 --> 00:32:05,120 It is. 619 00:32:05,160 --> 00:32:06,920 (BOTH LAUGH) 620 00:32:06,960 --> 00:32:10,000 And it's very much a David Lean theme - isn't it? - 621 00:32:10,040 --> 00:32:13,680 this idea of what leads up to romance - 622 00:32:13,720 --> 00:32:16,440 the nearness of romance, 623 00:32:16,480 --> 00:32:18,520 the tragedy of romance. 624 00:32:18,560 --> 00:32:21,680 He's an intensely romantic filmmaker right across the board. 625 00:32:21,720 --> 00:32:23,840 Yet I think what he's fascinated in 626 00:32:23,880 --> 00:32:27,560 is "the almost", rather than the actual affair. 627 00:32:27,600 --> 00:32:30,400 I wouldn't like to sort of pin biography 628 00:32:30,440 --> 00:32:32,920 to somebody's film-making career too closely, 629 00:32:32,960 --> 00:32:36,240 but the fact that David Lean was married and separated six times 630 00:32:36,280 --> 00:32:39,800 maybe suggests something about "the almost" in his work. 631 00:32:39,840 --> 00:32:42,400 But a lot of his characters straight through his career 632 00:32:42,440 --> 00:32:45,280 are kind of yearners and dreamers about romance. 633 00:32:45,320 --> 00:32:48,880 But the idea is often better than the reality. 634 00:32:48,920 --> 00:32:52,080 One of the genius elements of David Lean's 635 00:32:52,120 --> 00:32:55,680 sort of transformation of Coward's story 636 00:32:55,720 --> 00:32:57,960 is to make it so much from Laura's point of view. 637 00:32:58,000 --> 00:33:00,000 So it's sort of a woman's picture. 638 00:33:00,040 --> 00:33:02,040 And we're led completely by her - 639 00:33:02,080 --> 00:33:04,760 her love and her convictions about what's right. 640 00:33:04,800 --> 00:33:08,240 And that means - in the classic propaganda film, 641 00:33:08,280 --> 00:33:12,760 almost Casablanca sense - that you need to not worry so much 642 00:33:12,800 --> 00:33:16,440 about following your own wild desires and be responsible, 643 00:33:16,480 --> 00:33:19,800 but to have a moral responsibility to do the right thing, 644 00:33:19,840 --> 00:33:22,960 and to, you know, return to the status quo. 645 00:33:23,000 --> 00:33:25,840 And I think that was quite a powerful message at a time when, 646 00:33:25,880 --> 00:33:29,160 you know, women - during the war - were separated from their husbands 647 00:33:29,200 --> 00:33:31,520 and their sweethearts for a long period of time. 648 00:33:31,560 --> 00:33:33,240 Men were away, 649 00:33:33,280 --> 00:33:35,960 and things happen, probably on both sides, 650 00:33:36,000 --> 00:33:38,000 things happen - there were affairs. 651 00:33:38,040 --> 00:33:40,240 But Brief Encounter kind of does say, 652 00:33:40,280 --> 00:33:42,800 or at least its characters believe, you know, 653 00:33:42,840 --> 00:33:45,160 go back, go back to Fred, your boring husband, 654 00:33:45,200 --> 00:33:48,160 go back to the children. You know, there's this kind of 655 00:33:48,200 --> 00:33:51,240 real old-fashioned Englishness about respectability. 656 00:33:54,480 --> 00:33:56,480 Between Lean's impeccable eye 657 00:33:56,520 --> 00:33:59,560 and the genius of cinematographer Robert Krasker, 658 00:33:59,600 --> 00:34:03,360 suburban Britain is transformed into a film noir. 659 00:34:03,400 --> 00:34:06,000 The gusts of dreamlike steam, 660 00:34:06,040 --> 00:34:08,840 the long shadow on the walls of the subway 661 00:34:08,880 --> 00:34:10,880 and the veils of cigarette smoke 662 00:34:10,920 --> 00:34:14,520 are a way of visualising the emotional trauma. 663 00:34:14,560 --> 00:34:18,560 Krasker would of course later shoot The Third Man, 664 00:34:18,600 --> 00:34:20,719 and you can see the connection. 665 00:34:20,760 --> 00:34:25,880 One of the most successful elements of this film is the cinematography. 666 00:34:25,920 --> 00:34:28,840 This by the great Robert Krasker, 667 00:34:28,880 --> 00:34:32,840 who had been in films first as a camera operator 668 00:34:32,880 --> 00:34:34,920 since the early-'30s, 669 00:34:34,960 --> 00:34:38,440 and he'd worked with the greats, including Alexander Korda, 670 00:34:38,480 --> 00:34:42,600 oddly enough, in Technicolor film, in the late-'30s. 671 00:34:42,639 --> 00:34:47,719 So he's kind of gone back into black and white here. 672 00:34:47,760 --> 00:34:51,280 What's fascinating about him is he carries with him in this 673 00:34:51,320 --> 00:34:56,520 a sense of expressionism and noir. 674 00:34:56,560 --> 00:34:59,040 Much of this film, certainly all the stuff 675 00:34:59,080 --> 00:35:01,720 that's shot in the station, is shot at night. 676 00:35:01,760 --> 00:35:04,400 And so you've got all those kind of shadows 677 00:35:04,440 --> 00:35:08,360 and, you know, dark alleys and bridges, 678 00:35:08,400 --> 00:35:10,600 which they have to sort of go under, 679 00:35:10,640 --> 00:35:13,880 which is a sort of classic trope of film noir, in a way. 680 00:35:13,920 --> 00:35:17,080 It won't surprise anyone to learn that, in fact, 681 00:35:17,120 --> 00:35:20,640 this was his introduction to this kind of movie, 682 00:35:20,680 --> 00:35:23,720 and he then went on to make Odd Man Out, 683 00:35:23,760 --> 00:35:26,200 and finally The Third Man. 684 00:35:26,240 --> 00:35:28,480 And there are elements in Brief Encounter 685 00:35:28,520 --> 00:35:31,600 which directly relate to The Third Man. 686 00:35:31,640 --> 00:35:34,520 And you can see everything - everything he does in that - 687 00:35:34,560 --> 00:35:38,720 sort of reaches its full fruition in Carol Reed's masterpiece. 688 00:35:38,760 --> 00:35:40,760 689 00:36:21,680 --> 00:36:23,680 No, Alec, not here. Someone will see. 690 00:36:23,720 --> 00:36:25,720 I love you so. 691 00:36:30,400 --> 00:36:32,400 (TRAIN CHUGGING) 692 00:36:33,720 --> 00:36:35,880 (DRAMATIC MUSIC) 693 00:36:37,760 --> 00:36:40,600 FRED: Do you think we might turn that down a bit, darling? 694 00:36:40,640 --> 00:36:43,160 Hi, Laura! 695 00:36:43,200 --> 00:36:45,200 696 00:36:45,240 --> 00:36:47,240 Yes, dear? 697 00:36:47,280 --> 00:36:49,280 You were miles away. 698 00:36:50,160 --> 00:36:52,120 Was I? Yes, I suppose I was. 699 00:36:52,160 --> 00:36:54,000 Do you mind if we turn that down a little? 700 00:36:54,040 --> 00:36:56,360 It really is deafening. No, of course not. 701 00:36:57,600 --> 00:37:01,000 The film is beautifully constructed around the theme of time. 702 00:37:01,040 --> 00:37:03,240 There is never enough of it. 703 00:37:03,280 --> 00:37:05,320 These are Laura's memories, 704 00:37:05,360 --> 00:37:07,720 six weeks that have changed her forever. 705 00:37:07,760 --> 00:37:12,240 The romance is glimpsed in stolen lunchtimes, afternoons 706 00:37:12,280 --> 00:37:14,400 or gloomy British evenings. 707 00:37:14,440 --> 00:37:17,720 They are urged on by train timetables, 708 00:37:17,760 --> 00:37:19,680 the shrill call of whistles, 709 00:37:19,720 --> 00:37:21,920 closing time at the cafe - 710 00:37:21,960 --> 00:37:25,480 never having the time to say what they feel. 711 00:37:25,520 --> 00:37:28,800 And there's also this terrific use of Rachmaninov 712 00:37:28,840 --> 00:37:31,440 as a wonderful piece of music, 713 00:37:31,480 --> 00:37:36,000 but somehow symbolic of the turmoil beneath the surface. 714 00:37:36,040 --> 00:37:39,400 I think the Rachmaninov is very well deployed 715 00:37:39,440 --> 00:37:42,120 in that it's quite an overpowering piece of music. 716 00:37:42,160 --> 00:37:44,280 It's very kind of dramatic piano music. 717 00:37:44,320 --> 00:37:47,560 But it never does overpower the scenes 718 00:37:47,600 --> 00:37:49,920 because you first hear it through a radio, 719 00:37:49,960 --> 00:37:52,200 so this is actually Laura's taste. 720 00:37:52,240 --> 00:37:55,640 This is, you know, something that she would herself be listening to. 721 00:37:55,680 --> 00:37:58,640 And so, once again, it kind of plays 722 00:37:58,680 --> 00:38:01,560 as a piece of her memory or a piece of her interior life 723 00:38:01,600 --> 00:38:05,920 that she would then be in retrospect applying that piece of music 724 00:38:05,960 --> 00:38:11,480 over the top of these stolen moments that she's had with this man. 725 00:38:11,520 --> 00:38:13,520 726 00:38:17,520 --> 00:38:20,880 The critics of 1945, when the film was released, 727 00:38:20,920 --> 00:38:22,960 were overwhelming in their praise. 728 00:38:23,000 --> 00:38:25,840 Though the distributor Rank had feared 729 00:38:25,880 --> 00:38:28,520 it would only play to middle-class audiences, 730 00:38:28,560 --> 00:38:31,640 the film was a hit right across the country. 731 00:38:31,680 --> 00:38:34,920 David Lean was nominated for an Oscar as best director 732 00:38:34,960 --> 00:38:38,040 and the screenplay would also be recognised. 733 00:38:38,080 --> 00:38:40,720 Over the years, the film would be endlessly debated 734 00:38:40,760 --> 00:38:44,440 and is now rightly adored as a classic. 735 00:38:44,480 --> 00:38:49,600 David Lean would never really make a film quite like this again. 736 00:38:49,640 --> 00:38:52,440 This is largely, I think, 737 00:38:52,480 --> 00:38:55,760 due to the group around him, 738 00:38:55,800 --> 00:38:57,800 and Coward, especially. 739 00:38:57,840 --> 00:39:00,640 The first thing is that he didn't... 740 00:39:00,680 --> 00:39:04,680 You know, it's very tightly focused, very tightly focused. 741 00:39:04,720 --> 00:39:07,200 Of course there are peripheral characters in it, 742 00:39:07,240 --> 00:39:08,920 all of whom are wonderful. 743 00:39:08,960 --> 00:39:11,280 But the main focus is Celia Johnson. 744 00:39:11,320 --> 00:39:16,040 I mean, even Trevor Howard takes second fiddle to her. 745 00:39:16,080 --> 00:39:20,240 But... And it's her unbelievably luminous face and her eyes 746 00:39:20,280 --> 00:39:22,480 which will tell you the story, 747 00:39:22,520 --> 00:39:26,080 even without the dialogue, and the dialogue's absolutely superb. 748 00:39:26,120 --> 00:39:28,520 So that is unusual in itself. 749 00:39:28,560 --> 00:39:34,240 But it's because it has a delicacy and an intimacy and a sort of... 750 00:39:34,280 --> 00:39:37,480 It's a reduction into... 751 00:39:39,000 --> 00:39:42,160 ..a really tight focus, 752 00:39:42,200 --> 00:39:45,200 that was against Lean's basic idea. 753 00:39:45,240 --> 00:39:46,920 Lean worked on, you know... 754 00:39:46,960 --> 00:39:49,080 wanted to work on a big canvas, on a grand canvas, 755 00:39:49,120 --> 00:39:52,120 and of course eventually did. When you think of David Lean, 756 00:39:52,160 --> 00:39:55,880 you think of sort of huge, wonderful, expansive things 757 00:39:55,920 --> 00:39:57,600 like Lawrence Of Arabia. 758 00:39:57,640 --> 00:40:01,880 But the fact is that he did a marvellous job of this 759 00:40:01,920 --> 00:40:03,920 because he understood detail. 760 00:40:03,960 --> 00:40:07,680 He understood the way that people interact 761 00:40:07,720 --> 00:40:10,560 and the way of actually getting them to do it. 762 00:40:10,600 --> 00:40:13,000 What he's done is he's created 763 00:40:13,040 --> 00:40:16,280 an epic love story, 764 00:40:16,320 --> 00:40:19,600 a doomed love story, in miniature. 765 00:40:19,640 --> 00:40:21,320 That's what this is. 766 00:40:21,360 --> 00:40:26,600 And that's why they use Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No.2, 767 00:40:26,640 --> 00:40:29,800 which is this sort of soaring, grand scheme. 768 00:40:29,840 --> 00:40:32,760 It's sort of almost ironic to use that, 769 00:40:32,800 --> 00:40:35,160 because of course it isn't. It isn't. 770 00:40:35,200 --> 00:40:37,200 It's a small, little romance. 771 00:40:37,240 --> 00:40:39,480 But is it? It's not. 772 00:40:39,520 --> 00:40:41,880 It shows that, you know, ordinary people 773 00:40:41,920 --> 00:40:45,800 can have those dreams of passion, can have those grand dreams. 774 00:40:45,840 --> 00:40:49,360 It's just that they are constrained 775 00:40:49,400 --> 00:40:52,480 by society and social conventions. 776 00:40:52,520 --> 00:40:57,200 Brief Encounter is not only one of the great British romances, 777 00:40:57,240 --> 00:41:00,440 it's one of the most enduring British films of all time. 778 00:41:00,480 --> 00:41:03,880 But it is not a love story in the traditional movie sense. 779 00:41:03,920 --> 00:41:07,080 It expresses a penetrating truth 780 00:41:07,120 --> 00:41:11,400 about the complexity of love that few films ever have. 781 00:41:11,440 --> 00:41:15,440 The all-consuming power, the excitement 782 00:41:15,480 --> 00:41:18,680 and the devastating consequences. 783 00:41:18,720 --> 00:41:24,440 The film is a psychological enquiry years ahead of its time. 784 00:41:24,480 --> 00:41:26,920 And to send an audience away 785 00:41:26,960 --> 00:41:30,920 unfulfilled, yearning and dreaming and wondering, 786 00:41:30,960 --> 00:41:33,520 I think it's a very powerful tool. 787 00:41:33,560 --> 00:41:35,840 It's sort of an unusual tool, you know. 788 00:41:35,880 --> 00:41:37,880 Tied-up films, they're tied in a bow 789 00:41:37,920 --> 00:41:39,720 and happy ending and we're all happy. 790 00:41:39,760 --> 00:41:42,120 This is a film that sends you out and you're just left 791 00:41:42,160 --> 00:41:44,800 to wonder and ponder and think about it forever. 792 00:41:44,840 --> 00:41:48,160 I think the kind of melancholy - romantic melancholy - 793 00:41:48,200 --> 00:41:53,120 and the what-if is such a huge part of the romantic imagination 794 00:41:53,160 --> 00:41:55,600 and the romantic cinematic imagination as well. 795 00:41:55,640 --> 00:41:57,720 It's certainly a big part of David Lean's 796 00:41:57,760 --> 00:42:01,160 kind of reason for being in his films. 797 00:42:01,200 --> 00:42:04,120 There's a real sensibility around this kind of yearning. 798 00:42:04,160 --> 00:42:07,320 Brief Encounter has sometimes been called the British Casablanca, 799 00:42:07,360 --> 00:42:09,960 which perhaps isn't completely accurate, 800 00:42:10,000 --> 00:42:13,880 but certainly has that similar sting in its tail at the end, 801 00:42:13,920 --> 00:42:17,400 where you're not really getting the coupling off that you hope for, 802 00:42:17,440 --> 00:42:20,560 but you understand the reason - and it leaves you with something 803 00:42:20,600 --> 00:42:24,120 a little bit more long-lasting and valuable. 804 00:42:24,160 --> 00:42:26,160 805 00:42:27,960 --> 00:42:29,960 (PENSIVE MUSIC) 806 00:42:31,000 --> 00:42:33,720 LAURA: 'That's when I nearly fainted.' 807 00:42:52,560 --> 00:42:55,520 The implication of the film is that 808 00:42:55,560 --> 00:43:01,240 you must not allow your personal feelings, passions, 809 00:43:01,280 --> 00:43:05,040 to sacrifice the greater good. 810 00:43:05,080 --> 00:43:07,760 In other words, you know, you've got a sense of duty, 811 00:43:07,800 --> 00:43:12,000 either as a parent or a husband or wife, 812 00:43:12,040 --> 00:43:16,200 to the family, but also to society as a whole. 813 00:43:16,240 --> 00:43:18,240 For Celia Johnson, for Laura, 814 00:43:18,280 --> 00:43:20,680 there is the sense that the ending, 815 00:43:20,720 --> 00:43:23,600 the departure of her would-be lover, 816 00:43:23,640 --> 00:43:26,920 is actually the only outcome she can tolerate. 817 00:43:26,960 --> 00:43:29,360 In a way, Laura is swept up 818 00:43:29,400 --> 00:43:33,040 by a passionate torrent that's completely outside her control. 819 00:43:33,080 --> 00:43:37,480 She is caught in the headlamps of this man's gaze 820 00:43:37,520 --> 00:43:40,200 and his words, his passion, his youth, 821 00:43:40,240 --> 00:43:43,760 and she's completely out of control. She's fighting desperately 822 00:43:43,800 --> 00:43:46,560 to keep a hold of some sense of propriety of herself, 823 00:43:46,600 --> 00:43:48,880 of the woman who's married to her husband 824 00:43:48,920 --> 00:43:51,080 and happy there with her two children. 825 00:43:51,120 --> 00:43:52,880 She says at the very beginning of the film, 826 00:43:52,920 --> 00:43:54,600 "You're the only person," to her husband, 827 00:43:54,640 --> 00:43:56,920 "You're the only person I could talk to about this, 828 00:43:56,960 --> 00:43:58,840 although I can never tell you." And that means 829 00:43:58,880 --> 00:44:01,240 that there is something absolutely right about him. 830 00:44:01,280 --> 00:44:03,440 He is the only person she could ever talk to 831 00:44:03,480 --> 00:44:05,320 about this incident in her life. 832 00:44:05,360 --> 00:44:07,640 So there is an incredibly strong bond between them. 833 00:44:07,680 --> 00:44:10,400 He is someone who is more than just a boring, bumptious, 834 00:44:10,440 --> 00:44:12,680 crossword-puzzle-doing fool. 835 00:44:12,720 --> 00:44:15,560 And the fact that he understands everything that's happened, 836 00:44:15,600 --> 00:44:18,960 we get this sense... One of the last things he says is, 837 00:44:19,000 --> 00:44:22,240 "You've been a very long way away. Thank you for coming back to me." 838 00:44:22,280 --> 00:44:23,960 And we briefly think, "Well, 839 00:44:24,000 --> 00:44:25,840 maybe he knew everything all along." 840 00:44:25,880 --> 00:44:28,600 But there's something between them, which is right. 841 00:44:28,640 --> 00:44:30,960 He will accept that. He will accept what she had to do 842 00:44:31,000 --> 00:44:33,280 and he will welcome her back without judgement. 843 00:44:33,320 --> 00:44:35,960 So, in a way, that is a happy ending. 844 00:44:36,000 --> 00:44:39,160 It is Brief Encounter that made David Lean famous. 845 00:44:39,200 --> 00:44:41,640 It is a revelation of his cinematic talent - 846 00:44:41,680 --> 00:44:44,520 this audacious structure of flashbacks 847 00:44:44,560 --> 00:44:46,720 and flashbacks within flashbacks, 848 00:44:46,760 --> 00:44:50,320 those mesmerizingly restrained performance 849 00:44:50,360 --> 00:44:53,200 and those sublime visuals. 850 00:44:53,240 --> 00:44:55,760 Looking back across his storied career, 851 00:44:55,800 --> 00:44:58,080 famed for its scope and scale, 852 00:44:58,120 --> 00:45:02,280 Brief Encounter is an epic of the human heart. 853 00:45:02,320 --> 00:45:04,320 854 00:45:08,520 --> 00:45:10,520 Laura. 855 00:45:12,480 --> 00:45:14,480 Yes, dear? 856 00:45:14,520 --> 00:45:16,520 Whatever your dream was, 857 00:45:16,560 --> 00:45:18,560 it wasn't a very happy one, was it? 858 00:45:21,360 --> 00:45:23,360 No. 859 00:45:23,400 --> 00:45:25,400 Is there anything I can do to help? 860 00:45:28,360 --> 00:45:31,240 Yes, Fred, you always help. 861 00:45:31,280 --> 00:45:33,280 You've been a long way away. 862 00:45:34,920 --> 00:45:36,760 Yes. 863 00:45:36,800 --> 00:45:38,800 Thank you for coming back to me. 864 00:45:42,400 --> 00:45:44,400 (SOBS) 865 00:45:44,440 --> 00:45:46,440 (RACHMANINOV CONCERTO SWELLS) 866 00:46:11,000 --> 00:46:14,120 Subtitles by Sky Access Services www.skyaccessibility.sky