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Post by Fading Fast on Oct 31, 2024 11:21:53 GMT
BRIEF ENCOUNTER is a film I can re-watch fairly often and not tire of it. It is a fantastic film.
I always feel a little frustrated with Laura, however, because her husband, Fred, is just so darn nice. I want to shout at her "be happy with what you have. Many women don't have such a nice man!" 
Like you, I can watch it fairly often and have. |
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Post by topbilled on Nov 9, 2024 11:47:34 GMT
This film is from 1958.
There’s a little trouble with the ship
After the release of 20th Century Fox’s TITANIC in 1953, renewed interest in the sinking of the well-known passenger ship gripped the public, along with similar disaster-at-sea tales. The book upon which this British version is based was published in 1955 and supposedly drew on the accounts of real-life survivors. However, I tend to think that some of it is a fictionalized retelling.
Much of what is depicted gives us the British stiff upper lip handling of crisis to the point that we witness very little outward emotion. We are left with a rather sterile presentation of highly dramatic events. The ship is too clean in scenes, even in the areas where the immigrant classes are traveling. The ship is also too steady; there is no sense that this is a vessel afloat on water because the actors are walking on a very level soundstage.
I sincerely doubt all Brits on board the Titanic behaved in such a genteel fashion in such a controlled environment. Not when faced with death, because at that point, the basic human desire to live must take over and cultural veneer goes by the wayside. And speaking of culture, why couldn’t they have hired some American performers to play the American characters?
This version takes liberties and messes with the factual chronology. A story of this sort needs to be focused on when things happen, when obstacles present themselves; and specifically, when lives are lost and saved. There is so much shifting between a multiplicity of viewpoints that one can never be sure when important things are happening, only that an iceberg was struck, which even the most astute kindergartener already knows. It’s like saying something happened before or after the coming of Christ without affixing any particular significance to the exact moment of Christmas.
The story that appears on screen is utterly devoid of any real human meaning. The filmmakers keep cutting to a model of the ship on the water, but this miniature has no silhouettes of people in the windows or on the decks, which substantiates just how ludicrous this production is at times.
The book was lauded for its pointillism, and occasionally, the filmmakers do try to emulate that with different points of interest on the Titanic as well as points of interest on the Carpathia. But because the points are often so fleeting, we never get much depth or development of the characters and their individual scenarios. The only defined character is the second officer played by Kenneth More.
But even then, we never see any struggle with darkness in him; and in this type of situation, I think an officer would be in a constant state of temptation, dealing with his own worst possible impulses for self-preservation. For if he was ultimately heroic in putting others first, we’d certainly glimpse the struggle and the emotional cost, the human toll it took on him. But this film doesn’t stay with him long enough in any of the scenes to give us that depth or hint of struggle and victory. Mostly he is just there to connect random groups of characters in the same space and time. And that’s boring.
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Post by NoShear on Nov 9, 2024 19:48:22 GMT
Reviews for British films will be placed here.
 TopBilled, thought of your posting of the A London Film Production title imagery here with viewing of the first part of Martin Scorsese's MADE IN ENGLAND The Films of POWELL & PRESSBURGER (2024) this past Thursday on TCM: Scorsese spotlighted British movie company titles such as the aforementioned. |
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Post by topbilled on Nov 9, 2024 20:22:02 GMT
Reviews for British films will be placed here.
TopBilled, thought of your posting of the A London Film Production title imagery here with viewing of the first part of Martin Scorsese's MADE IN ENGLAND The Films of POWELL & PRESSBURGER (2024) this past Thursday on TCM: Scorsese spotlighted British movie company titles such as the aforementioned. |
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