A pluperfect pendant of BRIEF ENCOUNTER (1945), David Lean plumps for his wife Ann Todd (both thrice married then) in this cinematic adaptation of H.G. Wells’ lesser-known romantic novel published in 1913, a perfervid love triangle between Mary Justin (Todd), her older banker husband Howard (Rains) and her old flame, a biology professor Steven Stratton (Howard).
As if tempted to envision what would happen if Celia Johnson’s Laura Jesson did go headlong with her extramarital affair with Trevor Howard’s Dr. Alec Harvey at the end of BRIEF ENCOUNTER, Lean adopts a similar character-centralized approach with a toothcomb. Commencing in medias res, the narrative spirits Mary away in a Swiss resort with her first-person voice-over retailing the prescience of a chance meeting with Steven after a nine-year gap, although a communicating room coincidence looks wildly unlikely for those who at least sets foot once outside his or her dwelling turf, then the time-line rewinds nine years back, during a New Year’s Eve ball, another chance meeting reunites former lovers Mary and Steven, and soon, they renew their romance against their best judgement.
Compared to Laura Jesson, Mary Justin stands precariously on a more inimical moral ground, as she confesses to Steven, she is not a good person who wants to have her cake and eat it as well. Attributed to her a “belonging to herself” modern attitude, the story counterproductively leaves her in the lurch for her fatal frailty that she simply forswears that attitude (which is ostensibly the only blockade to tie the knot with Steven), in exchange for materialistic stability, and we never know why Steven still wants to take her back after that blatant betrayal.
Anyway, nine years ago, Mary is granted a rare second chance with Steven, and again, she reneges when their assignation is uncovered by Howard, and Lean stages a brilliant coming-clean showdown with the triad, a combo of deft camera movements, expeditious editing choices and perfect reactionary response from all three thespians. Back to the Swiss resort, while Mary daydreams a third chance bestowed by kismet, reality finally bites hard when Howard arrives earlier to espy their “communicating room” arrangement and the ramifications will devastate two families, and Mary must do everything she can to redress her own fault, but when Howard finally flies off the handle, her fate is ominously foreshadowed by the whizzing Tube, who is her knight in the shining armor to save her from perdition? A conciliatory denouement is suffixed with an ironic change of heart that audience might not be prepared.
All three leads are more than adequate in subsisting their character’s embattled conscience, Trevor Howard persuasively continues his naturalistic, none-too-impassioned amicability inherited from BRIEF ENCOUNTER, and Ann Todd, although doesn’t have a prayer in emulating Celia Johnson’s superfine poignancy and haunting inscape, leastwise holds fast with a palpable sensibility that channels Mary’s ups-and-downs safely to its terminal, last but definitely not the least, Claude Rains, scoops up a rare chance to eloquently speak for the often overlooked role of a rich and prim cuckold, who must oversee a passionless marriage with an officious clause: If I forgo the demand of carnal knowledge from you, naturally it entails that you cannot get it from anyone else. A perennial conundrum of monogamy, is shredded to the core in David Lean’s wonderfully tangy melodrama.
referential entries: Lean’s BRIEF ENCOUNTER (1945, 9.0/10); SUMMERTIME (1955, 6.6/10).
