Pop Culture 101 - BRIEF ENCOUNTER

In 1952, Brief Encounter tied for ninth place as best film ever made in a survey conducted by the Cinematheque Belgique and tenth in the Sight and Sound survey.

Trevor Howard re-created his role in an American television version which aired in 1954 and Ginger Rogers played the female lead.

Howard eventually came to view Brief Encounter's success as a hindrance to his career, blinding people to his other achievements. When one too many interviewers asked about the film, he slammed down the phone after yelling, "Anyone would think I made nothing else."

The scene in which Howard borrows a friend's apartment hoping to make love to Johnson inspired writer-director Billy Wilder years later to create The Apartment (1960), in which Jack Lemmon stars as a young man who rises in the business world by loaning his apartment to executives in need of a place for their extra-marital dalliances.

In an effort to launch a career as a dramatic actress, singer Dinah Shore devoted an episode of her weekly variety show to an adaptation of Brief Encounter in which she co-starred with Barry Sullivan.

In a comic parallel to Brief Encounter, George Segal has an extra-marital affair with Glenda Jackson in A Touch of Class (1973). At one point they even weep copiously while watching the Lean film on television. Other films in which characters view Brief Encounter include Truly Madly Deeply (1991) and The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996).

Although Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto became a hit because of its use in Brief Encounter, in another Coward script, Blithe Spirit (1945), the medium, Madame Arcati (Margaret Rutherford), refuses to use his music during a séance, deeming it "too florid."

Brief Encounter was remade as a television movie in 1974 with Richard Burton and Sophia Loren in the leads.

British director Alan Parker used the film as the basis for a television commercial for frozen food.

Howard and Johnson reunited 35 years later as an aging married couple in the British television movie Staying On (1980), based on a story from Paul Scott's The Raj Quartet. Many reviewers said the film made it seem that their Brief Encounter characters had stayed together.

The film's international success has made Carnforth Station a Mecca for romantic film fans. The clock was reconstructed from original pieces found in a shop in Twickenham. The tea-room where Johnson and Howard met is now a visitor's center.

by Frank Miller