Examine the representation of the main characters in 'Brief Encounter' what do you learn about social class and moral attitudes of this film?
Brief Encounter was produced in 1945, Carlton visual entertainment, and directed by David Lean, who also directed 'great expectations'. The film is a simple but realistically-honest, unsentimental, self-told social melodrama of the quiet desperation involved in an illicit, extra-marital love affair between two married, middle-class individuals over several weekly meetings. The screenplay was adapted and based on playwright Noel Coward's 1935 short one-act play 'Still Life'.
This film gives an optimistic representation of the middle classes / upper classes. It gives a traditional idealised image of England in the 1940's. Laura, the main character is married, she is a housewife who stays at home looking after the children and the house. The husband is the head of the household and earns the families income. His character is a traditional husband, sitting in front of the fire smoking and reading the newspaper.
The film begins with the romantic affair ending in the train stations tearoom, the main location of the film, and then she leaves to go home to her husband and family, which are the idealised family with two children one girl, one boy and a mum and dad. The film then goes into a flashback of Laura's confession of her romantic escape from her normal daily routines considered unusually climactic for an "ordinary woman." The story is narrated and told by a series of flashback memories by the lonely country housewife, she feels trapped and circumscribed within a repressive social system and rebels against the limitations of life itself. Laura fantasizes and recalls the last few tumultuous weeks of her life while seated in the armchair of her living room. She begins her flashback by describing the ordinariness of her situation.
Brief Encounter was produced in 1945, Carlton visual entertainment, and directed by David Lean, who also directed 'great expectations'. The film is a simple but realistically-honest, unsentimental, self-told social melodrama of the quiet desperation involved in an illicit, extra-marital love affair between two married, middle-class individuals over several weekly meetings. The screenplay was adapted and based on playwright Noel Coward's 1935 short one-act play 'Still Life'.
This film gives an optimistic representation of the middle classes / upper classes. It gives a traditional idealised image of England in the 1940's. Laura, the main character is married, she is a housewife who stays at home looking after the children and the house. The husband is the head of the household and earns the families income. His character is a traditional husband, sitting in front of the fire smoking and reading the newspaper.
The film begins with the romantic affair ending in the train stations tearoom, the main location of the film, and then she leaves to go home to her husband and family, which are the idealised family with two children one girl, one boy and a mum and dad. The film then goes into a flashback of Laura's confession of her romantic escape from her normal daily routines considered unusually climactic for an "ordinary woman." The story is narrated and told by a series of flashback memories by the lonely country housewife, she feels trapped and circumscribed within a repressive social system and rebels against the limitations of life itself. Laura fantasizes and recalls the last few tumultuous weeks of her life while seated in the armchair of her living room. She begins her flashback by describing the ordinariness of her situation.
