Brief Encounter

One of the most vivid, impassioned and painfully believable love stories ever committed to celluloid.

Sheer perfection-the gold standard of tragic romances whose influence can still be seen to this day.

Cyril Raymond manages to invest the stodgy character with a lovable quality.

Rarely rises above the level of the old women's magazines.

Some films don't age well, and no doubt Brief Encounter had more of an emotional effect in the social climate of post-war Britain.

An uncommonly good little picture -- and one which is frankly designed to appeal to that group of film-goers who are provoked by the 'usual movie tripe.'

Brief Encounter makes an illicit love affair more than that, giving the doomed romance more of a soul than a thousand tragic romances since then.

Romance and goodness are evoked with equal power and from these conflicting impulses, voluptuous demons spring eternal.

The leads are outstanding, but credit should also go to the forgotten Cyril Raymond, whose decent dullness as Johnson's husband makes those stolen Thursdays seem so special.

One of cinema's classic love stories.

Noël Coward's Brief Encounter is, to my mind, not only the most mature work Mr Coward has yet prepared for the cinema, but one of the most emotionally honest and deeply satisfactory films that have ever been made in this country.

... still embraced as one of the most romantic films ever made, and it has earned its reputation.