BRIEF ENCOUNTER (1945)

"I love those wide eyes," intones Alec to Laura midway in the movie.
And I wanna say, "Me, too."

This is on the top heap of my all-time favorite films.
If Robert Osborne asked me to sit next to him as guest-programmer for a night on TCM, this would undoubtedly be one I would choose to air - with a Kleenex nearby.
Finally got a chance to see it in a movie house and it's as moving and clearly impeccable the fifth (sixth? I've lost count, really) as it was the first time viewing it.

Short and simple: A piece of grit gets into those said eyes, Alec brushes it off, and so begins an "affair" that threatens their British-ness. That economy adds to its sheen. Its beauty and artistry lies in how it's told.

I have tried to pinpoint the moment when I feel my eyes well up. I know it's near the end. But I can never quite say whether it's a word, a gesture, the music, or the image that gets me. And it's not any individual aspect of the movie that does. I believe it's the sum of all these parts, its gestalt, if you will, that slays me every time. Each cinematic element adds up to that emotional impact.

Consider the opening: two trains passing running in opposite directions. It is how the movie ends. That's not a spoiler because in the movie, we begin at the end. Note the noir-lit lovers that make them look positively criminal. You develop a Pavlovian response to those train bells. Hear it many times, as I have, and you too can distinguish the ring for the express train. David Lean embeds the lovers in Rachmaninoff (hearing it instantly conjures up cinematic images) - florid, but fitting to Laura's confessional. Most of all, those eyes. Celia Johnson's eyes express octaves of emotions. See the scene when she realizes Alec will never tell his wife about meeting her and contrast it with how those eyes ignite when she sees Alec really meant to meet up with her the following Thursday.

Just think, without seeing this 86-minute masterpiece, Wong Kar-Wai's "In the Mood for Love" (or many of his movies, for that matter) would never be and the following scene from "The History Boys" would be lost on you: