Brief Encounter

Brief Encounter (1945), adapted from Noel Coward's play Still Life, is a classic of British cinema – a tale of impossible love between a married woman and a man she meets while waiting for a train. Though it's a film made by men, it is the woman's voice we hear recounting the story of a small-town love affair and her renunciation of it. In his lucid analysis of the film, Richard Dyer explores how its depiction of powerful feelings kept under wraps is a definitive example of a particularly English style of emotional restraint, but also how it spoke to a gay audience for whom this subject – forbidden love between ordinary people – had a special resonance. This reissued edition features original cover artwork by Rania Moudaress and a substantial new foreword that revisits the film and recent readings of it, covering its enduring legacy and adaptation for theatre and television.

"An unnamed American city feeling the effects of a war waged far away and suffering from bad weather is the backdrop for this startling work of fiction. The protagonists are aimless young men going from one blue collar job to the next, or in a few cases, aspiring to middle management. Their everyday struggles--with women, with the morning commute, with a series of cruel bosses--are somehow transformed into storytelling that is both universally resonant and wonderfully uncanny. That is the unsettling, funny, and ultimately heartfelt originality of Saïd Sayrafiezadeh's short fiction, to be at home in a world not quite our own but with many, many lessons to offer us"--

This book explores the legacies of David Lean's Brief Encounter, tracing the classic film's influence on cinema, television, literature and more.

Noël Coward's Brief Encounter is remembered as one of the most haunting love stories on screen ever. Drawing on the characteristic wit and musicality of Kneehigh, Emma Rice, former Joint Artistic Director of the Company, has adapted Coward's classic 1945 screenplay, and the one-act play Still Life on which it was based, into a richly theatrical, imaginative and vibrant piece of theatre. From an original idea by David Pugh & Dafydd Rogers, Kneehigh's production received its world premiere in 2008. This edition is published to coincide with the production's run live at the Empire Cinema in London's West End for 2018, co-produced by Steve and Jenny Wiener and The Old Vic. With an updated foreword by Emma Rice. 'Surely the most enchanting work of stagecraft ever inspired by a movie.' Ben Brantley, The New York Times 'Moving, funny, gripping and even at its most inventive, true to the original and its all-English heart' The Times

The best of short literary memoirs, essays, and reflections, many of which were written expressly for this collection. Also available The late Judith Kitchen, editor of the perennially popular anthologies Short Takes, In Short, and In Brief, was greatly influential in recognizing and establishing flash creative nonfiction as a form in its own right. In Brief Encounters, she and writer/editor/actor Dinah Lenney expand this vibrant field with nearly eighty new selections: shorts—as these sharply focused pieces have come to be known— representing an impressive range of voices, perspectives, sensibilities, and forms. Brief Encounters features the work of the emerging and the established—including Stuart Dybek, Roxanne Gay, Eduardo Galeano, Leslie Jamison, and Julian Barnes—arranged by theme to explore the human condition in ways intimate, idiosyncratic, funny, sad, provocative, lyrical, unflinching. From the rant to the rave, the meditation to the polemic, the confession to the valediction, this collection of shorts—this celebration of true and vivid prose—will enlarge your world.

Love affairs on the road, passionate holiday flings, disastrous pick ups, erotic encounters... In this seductive collection of stories, 22 authors from around the world write about travel romances. Combining fiction and reportage, this is must-have reading - for everyone who has dreamt of escape with that perfect stranger.

For many years, lesbian and gay representation in British cinema escaped the attention of critics and historians. Informative and entertaining, Brief Encounters examines performers, directors and a wide range of films to reveal a cinema more varied, vital and sensuous than we could have imagined. Through a close reading of mid-twentieth century British films, Bourne explores a range of lesbian and gay screen images from movies including Soldiers of the King, Pygmalion, In Which We Serve, Brief Encounter, Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes and A Hard Day's Night. In addition, he looks in detail at the ground-breaking Victim and brings together the moving reminiscences of gay men who first saw the film in the hostile climate of 1961, and the reactions of contemporary critics. This fluent chronology of over 150 famous, half-remembered and forgotten films is a testament to the contribution of gays and lesbian to British cinema culture.

Characters: 6 male, 5 female Interior Set One of the Tonight at 8:30 series, a success in London and New York. The movie Brief Encounter was based on this play. In a suburban rail station, Dr. Harvey removes a cinder from Laura's eye and they fall in love. Subsequent weekly meetings over tea, scenes debating respectability or love, and some sentimental moments transpire before they decide they must part forever. He is accepting a faraway post and she must return to a circumspect