Questions About Brief Encounter {[Hollie]}

Middle class life seems to be the main focus of the social groups present in the film as both of the main characters are very well spoken and live comfortable lives, Alec Harvey is a doctor and therefore a respectable member of the middle classes. Celia is a housewife which is what all women of the 1940s were. Due to this time being during the second war, Celia’s husband may have been away fighting and therefore it is easy to see why Celia may have been tempted to cheat, also during this time most people got married out of a sense of duty rather than for love so it is equally possible that Celia and her husband’s relationship may have been an ‘empty shell’ relationship where there are no substantial feelings for one another.


Director: David Lean.
Writers: Noel Coward, Anthony Havelock- Allan, David Lean and Ronald Neame.
Production: Cineguild.
David lean grew up in Croydon in a middle class family, he spent a lot of time working with the writer Noel coward on making adaptations of plays such as; ‘The Happy Breed’, ‘Blithe Spirit’ and ‘Brief Encounter’.
The writer Noel Coward perhaps influenced how the social groups of the flim where portrayed the most, according to IMDb.com he virtually invented the concept of Englishness for the 20th century. That is to say, he invented the idea of the well dressed, middle class intellectual speaking with a received pronunciation in the war time period. This is shown very well by both Alec and Celia in the film as they are both very well spoken people leading very middle class jobs.


Brief Encounter was originally a box office failure in England. However, it was presented at the very first Cannes film festival (1946) where it won almost unanimous praises as well as the Grand Prize.


Of a survey of 11,500 imdb.com users, the popularity of the film is clearly shown
As approximately 70% of the participants rated it with a score of 8 or above. This shows that the film has grown vastly in popularity over time and is now considered to be one of Lean’s greatest masterpieces.


The media of this time was mainly focused on the Second World War with films such as ‘The Way to the Stars’, ‘The Happy Breed’, ‘The way ahead’ and ‘The Gentle Sex’ focusing on drama, romance and the war. These reoccurring themes would have been popular at the time as the themes and characters would have been easy to relate to as the entire population of Britain where going through the war.

Brief Encounter Presentation {[Hollie]}

During class each person had to produce a presentaion in a group of 3 or 4.
My group consisted of Me, Charlea Rise and Jess Garman. Our presentation was on the marketing for Brief encounter as well as the target audience and the audience popularity.
Here are the slides if our presentation:

Slide 1, Title PageSlide 2, Theatrical trailer link.Slide 3, Marketing Posters.Slide 4, Brief Encounter radio show and the soundtrack.

Slide 5, Target audience for the film.
Slide 6, Audience reaction - originaly a box office failure!
Slide 7, Graph to show how popular the film is now. 30% rate it as a 10!Slide 8, Graph to show the awards Brief Encounter was nominated for.

Slide 9, Information about awards that the film won. In 1999 Breif encounter came second in the BFI poll of the top 100 British films!!
Slide 10, Bibliography.