Brief Encounter / Great Expectations

BRIEF ENCOUNTER, 1946, MGM Repertory, 86 min. Dir. David Lean. A seemingly happily married woman (Celia Johnson) gets a piece of grit in her eye at the train station; a married doctor (Trevor Howard) helps remove it. Thus starts one of the most heartbreaking portraits of lost love ever put on film. Based on Noël Coward's play "Still Life."

GREAT EXPECTATIONS, 1946, MGM Repertory, 118 min. Director David Lean's early masterpiece and Dickens adaptation focuses on an impoverished underdog (John Mills) who defies the caste system of Victorian England. Co-starring Alec Guinness (in his first film for Lean) and Jean Simmons, with Oscar-winning black-and-white photography by Guy Green.