Die große Leidenschaft

Invariably this film is bound to be compared to "Brief Encounter" and I guess that's to be expected given they were both directed by David Lean, starred Trevor Howard and featured adultery. Frankly I think any comparison to be unfair because that's where their similarities end. I've seen both and I favor "Passionate Friends". I should add that Ann Todd is not one of my favorite performers. Her demeanor can be expressionless and somewhat off putting. But here she truly shines. In Lean's extensive close ups she reveals inner feelings without uttering a word. And her smiles are explosively radiant. She utterly owns this part. The male parts are equally excellent. All the performances wrap the viewer with their passion and involve him in the characters' fates. This is not light viewing. It's an emotional roller coaster and as the climactic finale unfolded I found myself talking to the screen trying to influence the outcome. Without a doubt this is a story by adults, for adults. Highly recommended.

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.

It's easy to associate "The Passionate Friends" to its detriment with "Brief Encounter"; in its voice-over/flashback structure, in its themes of suicide and adultery, and of course in the casting of Trevor Howard. But in a sense -- although not, unfortunately, an entirely successful one -- in a sense, the later film is an attempt to do something very different with this source material. At the most basic level the two pictures have virtually nothing in common: "Brief Encounter" is a story of renunciation and unselfishness, of ordinary lives in an unromantic setting, of heartbreak from a painfully honest narrator. "The Passionate Friends" (a title never really explained) revolves ultimately around selfishness and self-deception, lavish trappings and a shallow surface gloss epitomised by the cheesy 'Swiss' tourist music that backs the initial establishing shots.

Mary's swelling soft-focus memories of her grand passion are deflated by jarring little jabs from the director, in what I suspect is intended as an alert to the viewer that her romantic-seeming situation is not quite what it seems -- in effect, she is an unreliable narrator, and the pay-off comes when she perceives, finally and appallingly, what she really is and what she has done. It is a climax worth waiting for, but it is slow to arrive; and the subtle wrongness in the love affair, the self-dramatisation and lack of authenticity (whether or not these are deliberate attempts to undermine her presentation of events, as hindsight suggests they may be) until then tend to come across simply as unconvincing story-telling.

It is never clear just what Mary means by her assertion that she wants to belong to herself and not to any lover. By the end, however, it is all too apparent that this mantra, reminiscent of the "Can't tie me down, babe" slogans of the (male) serial shaggers of the Sixties, is every bit as self-indulgent a female pose. She is in love with the idea of being in love: playing at it, day-dreaming transgressions. But when reality strikes, the whole game is exposed as a silly, hugely destructive fantasy.

After the first showdown with her husband (which we are specifically, and with hindsight, significantly, not allowed to witness), she warns Steven that she is not truly a good person to love. We -- and he -- do not then either understand or believe her; but she is right. She is not prepared to give herself, in modern parlance to 'commit': but she will not let go either.

The trouble for me is that for most of its running length the film seems to be simply a somewhat off-kilter account of an adulterous affair, over-ponderous, with clumsy use of music and heavily ironic dialogue. (The cinema audience, young and out for a good time, spent rather more time giggling than I assume the director intended.) The cinematic tricks that are present, such as the abrupt cuts in the taxi scene, the nested flashback structure, or the montage of advertisements in the Tube station reading "Keep Smiling", "Strength" and "Saved", too often seem awkward or labouring the obvious. If the idea was indeed to subtly undermine audience preconceptions, it doesn't really work -- there is no equivalent here to the stunning shift in perception that exists between the opening sequence of "Brief Encounter" and the final unwinding of the flashback.

As the ambiguous Mary, Ann Todd is a strangely elusive presence. The character is at the heart of the plot and has the lion's share of screen time, and yet most of that time it's hard to get a grip on her beyond the superficial. I'm still not sure whether this is an intended result of the acting and/or direction, or a flaw in the film.

Trevor Howard carries off the role of the unfortunate Steven with angular charm and provides the requisite sense of bewildered decency; but as others have rightly remarked, it is Claude Rains, in what might appear a largely peripheral role, who steals the show. Rich, older, physically unprepossessing, and mildly affectionate towards his wife when he can spare a moment from the financial markets, Howard Justin is the face of moneyed security versus the romantic passion promised by Mary's once-and-future lover, and as such represents the trappings of a marriage of convenience rather than an actual human being. But almost from the beginning we are made aware that he is neither unintelligent nor unobservant; later we discover that he is not as complaisant as the other couple have assumed, and finally, that he can be hurt -- and can love -- as deeply as any other man. Over a mere handful of scenes in the course of the film Claude Rains manages to convey more tension and real emotional presence than anyone else, and it is this contribution that makes the final twist both plausible and satisfying.

"The Passionate Friends" is not the great film that I feel it is perhaps trying to be; but it is certainly not an abortive carbon-copy of "Brief Encounter". The resolution of the film is starkly effective and is worth sitting through a glossy and rather uninspired beginning for: as a whole, it can be seen as an honourable failure.

(Edit: for what it's worth, in the month since I saw this film I haven't been able to get it out of my head...)

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.

This David Lean romance seems to have been swept under the carpet and yet it may be his most underrated masterpiece, (it's infinitely preferable to such elephantine fare as "Ryan's Daughter" and "Doctor Zhivago"). It marked the first time Lean would abandon the studio for more exotic locations, (in this case, the Swiss Alps), and seems designed as a vehicle for his wife, Ann Todd, who is outstanding as the respectable English wife who dallies with an old flame who happens to check into the room next door at the hotel she's staying in while on holiday. He's Trevor Howard and it's as if this is what might have happened in "Brief Encounter" had the lovers a bit more chutzpah.

Howard, too, is superb, (he always was; he remains one of the most underrated of all the great actors), and Todd's husband is the consistently excellent Claude Rains at his very best. As a tale of a genteel marriage threatened by genteel adultery it's beautifully done and why it isn't more highly appreciated is something of a mystery. If, like me, you believe Lean to be one of the great directors then this is essential viewing.