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.

THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS is a truly underrated film by David Lean. A simple story about a married couple and what happens when, over the years, the wife (Ann Todd) falls in love with another man (Trevor Howard) who eventually marries someone else. Todd must then reconcile her married life (to Claude Rains) with the realization that "romantic love" is not always the right answer.The film was quite controversial in its day because of the adultery theme, and it stands up quite well today because the film is very honest and very adult as it examines the dynamics of marriage and love. The film was retitled ONE WOMAN'S STORY for American theaters. The three stars are all superb under Lean's direction and turn in performances that allow the audience to sympathize with the characters caught in the web of love, desire, and deceit. Photographed in glistening B&W by Guy Green, the film is just gorgeous in its use of close- ups and on-location photography. Trevor Howard plays the "other man" in a straightforward way. He seems a decent sort of guy who just happens to fall in love with another man's wife. When it becomes clear that things will not work out, he moves on, marries, has children, etc. but never forgets. Claude Rains is excellent as the tolerant husband, an older man who knows his younger wife does not really love him. But after he reaches his breaking points (after the Swiss tryst) and files for divorce, he becomes a man of passionate rage.Ann Todd (Lean's wife) is superb as the conflicted wife who waivers between romantic love with Howard and sensible love with Rains. Even at age 40, Todd here is simply gorgeous and lovingly photographed in beautiful close-ups. When the divorce papers are filed and all three people are thrown into emotional turmoil, Todd realizes that the only way out is to plead with Rains to stop legal actions. In a brilliant scene, Rains rages and admits that his idea of a "sensible" marriage have been shattered because he has fallen in love with his own wife. Devastated (but not hearing the full confession) Todd decides to take drastic action as a way ofending everyone's emotional pain.Perhaps not as great as BRIEF ENCOUNTER, this film nonetheless packs a huge emotional wallop thanks to the three terrific performances. Highly recommended.

For The Passionate Friends David Lean treads similar ground as he does in his masterpiece, Brief Encounter, although here the source material is an HG Wells story as opposed to a Noel Coward play.The post-war Lean, with his attention to psychology and emotions, handled these stories of problematic romance brilliantly, and The Passionate Friends is a great example. We open with clouds and snow-capped mountains, a holiday location that foreshadows Lean's Summertime (1955), straight away giving us a sense of dreaminess and soaring emotions.This is Lean at his most psychological and expressionist. The sound and imagery is always calculated to mirror feelings – like the abruptness of the plane wheel touching the ground when Claude Rains returns from his trip abroad. The acting really supports this too. Considering it's a story about a love triangle, a large amount of the story is told through scenes in which one of the three principal characters is alone, or at least unobserved, and the actors convey inner thoughts through subtle expressions and gestures.Also, like the bulk of Lean's pictures from this era there are references to the war and the impact it had on British society. It's probably no coincidence that the decision was made to set the flashbacks of the affair in 1939 (Wells' original story was decades older), the year that war broke out. The cold, bureaucratic Claude Rains seems to be in part symbolic of the necessity in wartime to be rational and emotionless, and the story is an allegory for the need to break away from that.While it is a good story and very well-made, The Passionate Friends is unfortunately no Brief Encounter. On the acting side, Claude Rains is brilliant as always, but I'm less convinced by Ann Todd, who perhaps got the part more because she was Mrs Lean that for her talent. The plot can be a bit confusing with its flashbacks within flashbacks. Probably the biggest problem though is that we never get to totally empathise with the characters. While Brief Encounter's sheer ordinariness made it so universal, you don't get this to the same degree here, and that makes it by far the weaker of the two pictures. Still, it's by no means a disaster, and still one of the better films of David Lean's 1940s output.

I was surprised to learn that the original story for The Passionate Friends was written by H.G. Wells. Someone nowadays we identify with the science fiction genre. Certainly it seems to be what has survived best in English literature.The original story was written in 1913 so some considerable updating was done to make it 1949 contemporary. Lovers Ann Todd and Trevor Howard had an affair back in the day which was ended when Todd's husband Claude Rains found out. Eleven years go by and Todd and Howard meet at a mountain ski resort in Switzerland. Howard's now married and moved on, but they spend an innocent afternoon reminiscing. Rains catches them and misinterprets with near tragic results.Ann Todd may be one of the most beautiful women ever to grace the silver screen. She's probably best known in America for being Gregory Peck's loyal wife in The Paradine Case. No wonder Rains is so jealous.Trevor Howard is essentially doing the same part for David Lean that first got him stardom in Brief Encounter. In fact the story could almost be what happens to the protagonists in Brief Encounter if they met up again in the future. Claude Rains is always right on the money with his portrayals. There's a lot of what John Barrymore did in Maytime in what Rains does here.If it were done here in the USA, this would have been labeled a woman's picture. It is in fact a nicely done romantic story.