Left Field Cinema

Our story begins in post war London, a young woman named Mary Justin played by AnnTodd runs into her former lover and university lecturer Steve Stratton played by Trevor Howard. Mary is now married to Howard played by Claude Rains. Howard is a Treasury financier and Mary married him in a bid for a safe, secure relationship and Howard agreed on to their union with similar unspoken terms. Love doesn’t matter so long as they’re happy together; but what Mary and Steve had years earlier was passionate, and vibrant when compared to the safe and convenient nature of her relationship with Howard. Upon being reunited with Steve the old feelings are once again remerging and brief affair between the former lovers spells trouble as Mary’s husband gets wind of his wife’s unfaithful behaviour.

The script was written by Eric Ambler and Stanley Haynes, and was adapted from a H.G. Wells novel, this may surprise some viewers as The Passionate Friends is a rather sensitive and compassionate love story and Wells is better known for his high concept science fiction, but Wells skill as a storyteller is not lost here, the scenario is an old one, but he keeps a neat twist reserved for the last act. It’s was the second literary adaptation of the novel, the first was a little known 1922 Maurice Elvey film of the same name. The narrative is relatively complex to begin with, the first act and second act features flashbacks within flashbacks to a point, after which a linear structure is retained. But the structure isn’t the main selling point of this film, nor is it Wells superior plotting and character building; it is David Lean. This is one of his least known films and yet his style and approach leaps off the screen, and as always he was way a head of his time. He is in my opinion the greatest of British directors, far exceeding Alfred Hitchcock or Carol Reed. Without even tackling his later more famous works like Laurence of Arabia or Doctor Zhivago there is enough innovation in his 1940’s works to write a book about. With the outstanding production of Noel Coward’s Brief Encounter being the best example, but Brief Encounter offers us a problem here, coming a few years before this 1949 production of The Passionate Friends it casts a deep and unshakable shadow over our subject and this is primarily due to both films sharing the same themes and similar plots not to mention both staring Trevor Howard in near identical roles. Unlike a similar scenario with Carol Reed’s The Third Man and the earlier hidden classic Odd Man Out, I can not argue a case for The Passionate Friends being a better film than Brief Encounter. I count Brief Encounter as one of my top ten films of all time, and consider it a masterpiece of restrained plotting, unbiased characterisation and perfectly measured performances. However I can argue that The Passionate Friends has been unfairly dismissed over the years and deserves at the very least to be viewed more often as it to has depth and perception beyond its years. Had it been produced before Brief Encounter it may have been received with warmer critiques, but as it stands it appears that Lean had stagnated at the least and what’s more, he did not improve through repetition and two reasons for this are very clear from the start, firstly Ambler and Haynes have done a good job with the script but when compared to the might of Noel Coward they stumble and secondly and probably most importantly Ann Todd is not even close to as accomplished an actor as Celia Johnson who played the equivalent part in Brief Encounter. Again Todd is not terrible, she does an adequate job in the lead, and it is simply through comparison that she fails. Perhaps it’s not fair to continually compare the two films their moral compasses are on slightly different terms, also where Brief Encounter was about an illicit affair from the perspective of the woman involved, here the perspective switches between the three central characters. Howard’s character may be the same as Alec from Brief Encounter but in The Passionate Friends the character gets more to do, he is forced to fight for his lover and is actually does have his integrity challenged by the situation externally rather than internally. Steven’s arc has more conflict than Alec, he must battle for what he wants rather than moralise about it. Rather than give in Steven keeps trying to win Mary’s affections when she is clearly no good for him at all.

Photography wise this is classic Lean, the occasional Dutch tilt, deep shadows and broken light help to comprise a series of trademark excellent shots which in some respects out do Brief Encounter but again suffers from similarities, a train station is substituted for a tube station and the end of Mary’s character arc is almost identical to her Brief Encounter equivalent, and her final scenes are even shot in the same manner. Despite these similarities, The Passionate Friends appears nearly modern in some scenes, the way Lean frames shots makes you forget you’re watching a 1949 production. But beyond the photography is Lean’s character direction which here is put to great use. Howard is excellent and believable as usual, but the film belongs to Rains as the husband scorned. Best known as Humphrey Bogart’s local advocate in Casablanca, here Rains takes on a completely different character – cold, austere, calculating and deeply flawed. In the character of Howard and Rain’s performance lies the film trump card, a humanised villain. At the start of the story he seems no more than the undeserving, absent hearted and somewhat detached husband; a rich business man with a trophy wife and more politically and legally ambitious than loving and caring. He is dictatorial towards Mary, and even when he fights for her affections early on he still deals with it like a business man making a financial transaction rather than a husband struggling with matters of the heart. Taking quiet umbrage in the events which befall him and never letting himself externalise his anger. But by the films last act Rains delivers the final emotional punch in the form of an unexpected but credible character development which throws a new light on everything which preceded it. It is as emotionally devastating as the climax of Brief Encounter but thankfully for completely differing reasons.

All in all, to both films credit they do an exceptional and emotionally mature job of dealing with the sometimes thorny subject of extra-marital affairs (especially thorny in the era of the production). If you’ve not seen either Brief Encounter or The Passionate Friends, I’d recommend watching the later first as it won’t stifle your enjoyment of the former in the same manner as I’ve illustrated in this episode. If you can watch The Passionate Friends without drawing on the frequent similarities to Brief Encounter and can simply judge it on its own merits you won’t be disappointed.

M.Dawson