Celia Johnson has a chance encounter with Trevor Howard at a railway station and then they embark on affair with each other, but Celia Johnson struggles with love for her husband and her lover. This is a classic British film of post war middle class manners and is an excellently produced and acted drama in the best of British understatement. Celia Johnson gives a wonderful performance as the middle class woman bound by the social constraints but also expressing her feeling. This was a performance that rightly earned her an Oscar nomination. Much of the film is close up of her face and it is her expression, eyes and voice that make her character.
This was written and set in the 1930's but filmed at the end of the war and is about oing the right thing. At its heart it is a film that enabled people watching it to relate to these seemingly ordinary people. It is glamorous people but middle class. The station scenes were filmed at Carnforth Railway Station and are at the heart of the film. It was filmed in 1944 whilst the V2 bombs were still being sent over from Germany. What makes the film unusual is that at it starts with the end, then then continues in flash backs from Celia Johnson's perspective. The cinematographer was Robert Krasker who introduced elements that would become film noir and as seen in The Third man. This is the film that made director David Lean famous. The film is based on a short one act play by Noel Coward that David Lean developed into a cinematic experience.
5/5 
Celia Johnson
Trevor Howard
Stanley Holloway 
Joyce Carey 
Cyril Raymond