Random DVD round-up 2 - THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS aka ONE WOMAN'S STORY

Filmed after the superlative trilogy of BRIEF ENCOUNTER, GREAT EXPECTATIONS and OLIVER TWIST, David Lean's THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS is criminally overlooked. However, thanks to the British Film Institute, you can now watch it on restored DVD. Marvelous! The movie shows us what happens when two adults - passionately attracted but married to others - decide to rekindle an affair. Instead of abnegation, we have reckless indiscretion. And instead of a cuckold who patiently waits for his dutiful wife to return, we have a domineering, calculating husband who decides that he detests his wife. Moreover, he files for divorce naming both his wife and her lover. Given the period in which the movie was filmed, this would've been seen as a cruel (and yet bracingly honest?) act.

THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS sees David Lean in a quasi-Sirkian fit of expressionism. It contains a powerful central performance from Claude Rains as the cuckold and Trevor Howard is fine as the adulterer - pleading for a romantic love as opposed to a companionable compromise. If there is any fault with the film it's in the casting of Ann Todd as the wife - or rather in the fact that we never really understand how she's feeling. She remains enigmatic - a real flaw in a movie that's basically a series of character studies in extremis.

THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS was originally released in 1949. It is available on DVD, restored thanks to the British Film Institute.

BRIEF ENCOUNTER - pure class

86 minutes of pure cinematic class, and how lucky we are that it is back on UK screens across the UK for your viewing pleasure on Valentine's Day. In some ways, this is rather an odd choice for a date movie as it is not the usual self-indulgent mush where boy meets girl, they fall in love and they end up together. Rather, this is a story of unconsummated love. Fans of Wong Kar Wei's IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE, will recognise the potent mixture of melancholy and moral correctness.

The film is based on a short story by that acerbic wit, Noel Coward - the last person we can accuse of being a delusional romantic. He tells us about Laura and Alec, both married to good but rather stiff people, who meet by chance at a railway station. They start to meet every Thursday and fall in love. But a combination of practical obstacles and old-fashioned respect for the married state prevents them from acting upon their passion. From such a simple but poignant tale, director David Lean creates one of the best-loved and most admired movies in British cinema history*. He perfectly evokes the "niceness" of small-town British life as well as the complete impossibility of conducting a clandestine relationship in such a community. The two lead actors - upon whom the movie rests almost entirely - are marvellous. And while their old-fashioned accents might sound odd to contemporary viewers at first, we are soon too engrossed in this quietly tragic affair to care about such superficialities.

BRIEF ENCOUNTER was originally released in 1946. David Lean won the Grand Prize at Cannes. Celia Johnson was nominated for the Best Actress Oscar but lost out to Olivia de Havilland in the soon-to-be-forgotten TO EACH, HIS OWN. It also lost the Best Directing and Best Screenplay Oscars to the also forgotten THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES. It wasn't even nominated for Best Picture.

*And I have no doubt that part of the reason why Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto is played incessantly in UK concert halls is because it is featured heavily in this flick.