The Never-Ending Brief Encounter
By (Author) Brian McFarlane
Manchester University Press
Manchester University Press
14th August 2019
United Kingdom
Tertiary Education
791.4372
Paperback
136
Width 156mm, Height 234mm
This is a book for all those who have been absorbed and moved by Brief Encounter in the seventy or so years since its first appearance. It explores the central relationship of the film, where two people who fall unexpectedly in love come to realise that there is more to life than self-gratification. Mores have undoubtedly changed, for better or worse, but that essential moral choice has never lost its power. While acknowledging this, the book goes further in an effort to account for the way the film has passed into the wider culture. People born decades after its first appearance are now adept at picking up references to it, whether a black-and-white scene in a much later film or a passing joke about a bald man in a barber's shop. -- .
Brian McFarlane is Adjunct Professor at Swinburne University, Melbourne. He is the author of more than twenty books and hundreds of articles.