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Just what I expected

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Fantastic!

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

As countless people on this board have pointed out, comparisons of David Lean's "The Passionate Friends" and David Lean's "Brief Encounter" are inevitable, though probably not correct. This is a very different story.Told through the narration of the main character, Mary Justin (Ann Todd), it's the story of a man, Steven Stratton (Trevor Howard) and woman (Todd) in love who don't marry because he can't give her the good life. Instead, Mary marries financier Howard Justin (Claude Rains), whom she likes but doesn't love. Howard knows this, and, not being in love with her, so he thinks, doesn't mind.Five years later, she meets Steven again, and they become re-involved. Steven is unattached and, when Howard finds out, he expects Mary to run off with him. She doesn't. She asks him to leave and not see her again.Ten years later, while Howard is on a trip, both Mary and Steven run into one another in Switzerland. This time, Steven is happily married. Nothing goes on between them, but Howard doesn't believe Mary when she tells him that."Passionate Friends" is an interesting psychological drama, really focusing on Howard and Mary. Claude Rains dominates throughout the film - restrained through most of it, when he lets loose, it's really something. Howard is very likable as Steven, who is jerked around by Mary over the years.My feeling is that the film was supposed to focus on Mary, but this was derailed by Claude Rains' performance and Todd's (Mrs. Lean) detached quality. She's very good, but the character remains an enigma. Mary can't make a commitment. At the end, when she realizes the devastation the situation will bring, she's ready to sacrifice everything so that it doesn't.Parts of "Passionate Friends" are very strong, but some of it, due to the flashback within a flashback, gets a little confusing. Nevertheless, the performances are strong, and, if it's not entirely successful, it's at least a fascinating "not entirely successful" instead of just being bad.

When I saw the trailer for this 1948 film on "UTube", I was immediately struck by the similar musical format to "Brief Encounter".In the latter film, Lean wisely increased the dramatic tension by adding a classy soundtrack by selectively dubbing on Rachmaninov's 2nd piano concerto in C minor (played by Eileen Joyce).In "The Passionate Friends" he dubbed on the adagio second movement of Grieg's famous piano concerto in A minor.By casting Ann Todd as the leading lady he added more verisimilitude in the minds of the paying public who had previously seen her play a concert pianist in "The Seventh Veil (1945).As I have only seen the trailer I have graded it 7/10 which was the average universal rating of other informed reviewers many of whom have given very sagacious comments above.

Talk about referential: There's a moment very early on in which Ann Todd has just arrived on holiday from England and explores the hotel suite where husband Claude Rains will join her in a day or two. The suite is one of a pair with adjoining rooms and she walks out onto a balcony telling us in voice-over of an old lover, Trevor Howard who - unknown to her, has just arrived in the adjoing suite. Lean shoots this scene full on so that we see both balconies and as Todd emerges on to the one on the right it is the next best thing to a steal from the opening of Private Lives as it's possible to get. Private Lives was, of course, written by Noel Coward, the same Noel Coward who also wrote a one-act play called Still Life which was in turn directed by David Lean as Brief Encounter, which starred Trevor Howard. Thankfully Lean - who also worked with Coward memorably on In Which We Serve, This Happy Breed and Blithe Spirit - stops short of having Howard emerge on to the adjoining balcony and allows the film to veer towards another Coward one-act play become film, The Astonished Heart, both being variants on the eternal triangle, both featuring a leading character attempting suicide (and succeeding in The Astonished Heart). The original novel by H.G. Welles appeared on the eve of the first world war and apart from the title little else is retained in a version which begins and ends in real time (1948) and moves back to 1939 and 1935 for glimpses of the long-standing affair between Todd and Howard. Not unexpectedly Rains, who is not often associated with leading-man status, steals the film from a Howard who does little save exhibit an off-key charm and a Todd who makes an art-form out of anguish. If it's arguably the weakest of Lean's forties output we are measuring it against Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, Blithe Spirit, This Happy Breed and his masterpiece Brief Encounter which should put it into perspective.

David Lean's criminally underseen THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS has often been hastily dismissed as a weak "sequel" to his earlier masterpiece BRIEF ENCOUNTER. It's not. While it isn't the classic BRIEF ENCOUNTER is (not many films are), it has much to recommend. And it's not a sequel at all. Yes, it does deal with the same central theme of BRIEF ENCOUNTER (a married woman having an affair), and is a follow-up in the sense that the couple meet again years later, but the characters are entirely different. The film is told in a non-linear fashion, with lots of flashing forwards and backwards (it works well, yet is occasionally distracting). The plot basically is this: beautiful Mary (cool blonde Ann Todd, who had scored a huge hit with THE SEVENTH VEIL four years later and had recently married Lean) is in love with a young student Stephen (Trevor Howard), yet marries Claude Rains. Stephen and Mary drift into an affair after her marriage, and they are found out by an enraged (yet off-camera) Claude Rains. Years pass, and Todd, still the dutiful, notably childless wife of Rains, runs into Howard while they are both holidaying. The encounter is entirely innocent, yet Rains again finds out and assumes the pair are re-starting something that is now dead (Howard has since married, and had children). All this almost ends in tragedy, as Rains discovers how much Todd really does mean to him. Todd's somewhat detached screen presence works well for her character. The film is adapted from a short story by H.G Wells that explores an emancipated, beautiful young woman who rejects passion in favour of security. A poignant and telling scene between Howard and Todd early in the picture displays this notion- Howard:If two people love each other, they want to belong to each other. Todd: I want to belong to myself Howard: Then your life will be a failure Todd's marriage to Rains is a union of convenience. She can have the finer things in life she is accustomed to, she has the freedom to do as she pleases, and she's secure. Rains seems happy with this arrangement, telling himself that his love for her is also without true passion, until the crucial, revealing final scenes. These scenes constitute some of Rain's finest emotional work on film, as he spits at Ann Todd that she has treated him with all the kindness "that she would treat a dog". Rains comes to realise that his love for Mary is indeed "of the romantic kind", the same love that he denounces to Howard earlier in the picture. However, Todd, trance-like and thinking she has ruined several lives (potentially breaking up Howard's marriage, and also her own), walks to the train station and tries to commit suicide, ANNA KARENINA-like (she gets her own Garbo moment!). Rains, having followed her, pulls her back and takes her back home with him. While not a comforting ending, it seems to fit the picture well . As I said earlier, Rains is excellent, and this is one of his best performances. Unfortunately audiences tend to take the wonderful Trevor Howard for granted, and he is always an assured presence. Todd's beauty seems to be worshiped by husband Lean who gives her plenty of exquisite close-ups. As with THE SEVENTH VEIL, Todd is asked to carry much of the narrative weight of the film (the flashbacks and so forth), yet she works well and is particularly effective in a painfully bittersweet scene in which she imagines Howard as her husband, taking her into her arms, instead of Rains.