The Passionate Friends

source: The Passionate Friends

This film surprised me a lot. I watched it merely out of curiosity; by the end of the film, I was struck by Ann Todd's performance and had to watch the film twice back-to-back. She expressed her character's inner turmoil so well that I wonder if she was playing herself. I profess I don't watch a lot of movies, barely up to 2,000 films. However, that is only because I am damn picky. This is rather a mature story of romance. How a relationship could evolve from a marriage of convenience to a real thing of beauty between two people. How one's maturity could evolve from a real thing of passion to a mental state of contentment and stability. It's also a story of irrational jealousy that could potentially negate a prosperous family life. This is a good example of a film where filmmakers do not have to resort to gratuitous, meretricious scenes to portray lust or passion.

Passionate Friends has Trevor Howard and Ann Todd as former lovers meeting quite by accident 9 years later. This represents another "Brief Encounter" for Howard but this time there is plenty of trouble for him. The usually reliable Claude Rains plays Todd's husband. We view an absolutely loveless marriage which is more of marriage for convenience, comfort and prestige for both of them. You would think that something really exciting would happen when the banker Rains goes off to Berlin in 1939. Remember what happened to him when Fanny (Bette Davis) drove him away to Germany in the memorable "Mr. Skeffington?" This picture doesn't have the passion at all. The film never really explained why Howard and Todd never married before her marriage to Rains. The ending is like a production out of Hallmark. As in "Brief Encounter," Todd like 'Encounter's' Celia Johnson, almost throws herself on to the tracks. Was this a usual means for David Lean?

I hear David Lean married his star Ann Todd during the filming of this flick so that would explain the inordinate number of grueling close-ups of the ever suffering Mary in this long drawn-out soapy melodrama. Mary loves Steve and vice-verse but she wont marry him because she wants to be herself or whatever and she is last seen fleeing the scene. The movies begins at a ball in or around 1948 then a flash-back to another ball 1938-39 new years, then a flash-back within a flash-back at scenes of love and love. Confusion ensues, at least for me because I'm not sure if it's suppose to be circa 1948 or flash- back #1 or #2. Anyway, Mary ends up marrying much older but ironically filthy wealthy banker Claude Raines (bad toupee) because she likes his money and their twin beds. Then she meets Steve again and loves him again and they have an affair and she is gonna leave Claude for Steve but doesn't but then he wants a divorce and she doesn't and then he kicks her out of the mansion and she goes down the near-by tube station to plunge herself in front of a train but Claude miraculously appears and saves here and they go off to the mansion and I guess live miserably ever-after (meanwhile Steve has married and has two kids and seems happy or not, I'm not sure). I never heard of this film before (no wonder) and only watched it on FilmStruck because of David Lean. Well, you can't win them all.

As I watched this film, I couldn't help but thinking that it looked an awful lot like BRIEF ENCOUNTER. Like this other film, Trevor Howard plays a man who is married (once again playing "the other man") but in love with someone else (Ann Todd). In addition, the music, cinematography and style all look like BRIEF ENCOUNTER. The big difference is that instead of two married strangers meeting and falling in love, this film concerns two people who were once in love and have since gone their separate ways. Now, they meet once again and the old love is rekindled--even though she is now married to another man (Claude Rains). The film is told through flashbacks. The first is when the two were both single and in love. Somehow, despite their love, they separated and went their own way. Several years later, Todd is married to Claude Rains and meets up with Howard again. They begin an affair but Rains soon finds out about it. Despite it looking like Todd will leave her husband and go with Howard, she stays. Now, almost a decade later, Todd and Howard meet by chance in Switzerland. She is still married to Rains and Howard has finally married as well. In an interesting daydream, you see Todd imagining that when they met again that Howard had told him he never married. Only if... Now in Switzerland, the two old lovers spend a lot of time together--boating, hiking and the like (though, like in the rest of the film they never get around to sleeping together). Unexpectedly, Rains arrives back at the hotel unexpectedly early to find that his wife, once again, has taken up where she left off a decade earlier. He is furious and is determined to not only divorce her once and for all, but name Howard as the co-respondent--thus ruining Howard's marriage as well. What happens next, is simply amazing and makes the film. Up until then, the film seemed to excuse or even glamorize adultery. However, in a splendid twist, Rains' character opens up emotionally AND the film's ending is simply terrific. Like BRIEF ENCOUNTER, I was at first irritated with the couple because of their selfishness. Rains seemed like a nice enough but perhaps too emotionally-controlled guy and Todd cheating on him just seemed tawdry. Had he been a monster or if the affair didn't damage others or if she had divorced Rains and later taken up with Howard, then the film would have resonated more with me. However, the last 20 minutes of the film really turned my opinion around. Exceptionally well-paced, interesting and worth seeing--I ended up liking this one much more than BRIEF ENCOUNTER. I'm glad I stuck with it.

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.

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.

The Passionate Friends is the first of three films that director David Lean made with Ann Todd in and she gives a fine performance in this mannered British melodrama that evokes in ways two other popular British films of the era, Lean's Brief Encounter and the Todd starring The Seventh Veil. Former lovers Mary Justin (Todd) and Steven Stratton (Trevor Howard) meet accidentally at a New year's party and rekindle lost feelings. Trouble is she is married to a wealthy banker Howard Justin (Claude Rains) and Stratton's in a committed relationship. Justin discovers the affair however and puts an end to it. Nine years pass and they meet again while vacationing. Stratton is now married with kids but Howard thinks otherwise and files for divorce. Mary becomes desperate and suicidal. With quality performances (especially Rains) from all of the leads The Passionate Friends is credible melodrama that overachieves with Lean displaying his superb grasp of film language, employing jump cuts, montage and juxtaposition for maximum effect. With a few Hitchcock like flourishes along the way he does an excellent job of keeping the audience guessing right up until the final minutes. It is this subtle triumph of form that makes The Passionate Friends a superior example of its genre.

I would've given 2 stars if somebody anybody please for the love of god had pushed her in front of the train.

If you're going to make a sappy love story, you better give me two or three beautiful people to stare at for 90 minutes. I can get my fill of unattractive people by going shopping at Wal-Mart on a Tuesday afternoon. Don't get me wrong. Trevor Howard is vastly under-rated as an actor. But a matinee idol/leading man he is not. I've seen less pockmarks in Sasktatchewan asphalt. As for Ann Todd, David Lean might have been in love with her, fine, but in closeups she looks like a rat. She's also not really all that great of an actor, so there's that. Therefore, I couldn't care less whether they start or end up together. Sure, it's beautifully photographed. Who cares. I can see beautiful photographs by flicking through coffee table books at Barnes & Noble.