As a tea enthusiast, I’m always on the look-out for anything related to tea. As an Anglophile, I’m always on the look-out for that English connection. And as a lover of cinema, I’m always on the look-out for a good film.
I found all three in a 1946 English film called Brief Encounter.
Brief Encounter is the quintessential English romantic drama. It was filmed in black & white and is very atmospheric thanks to the well-known and talented director David Lean. What makes it absolutely brilliant, of course, is the fact that a large part of the film’s action takes place in the refreshment room (i.e., tea room) of a train station. It is a bittersweet love story, enhanced in the film by the haunting melody of Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto.
Brief Encounter was filmed at a railway station (Carnforth) in the North of England during the war. This particular location was chosen partly because it was far enough from Southeast England that, should there be one, sufficient warning of an air-raid attack could be given allowing time to turn out the filming lights to comply with wartime blackout restrictions.
Carnforth station and it’s real-life refreshment room has become a bit of a mecca for Brief Encounter fans. It’s on my Bucket List, that’s for sure! (Read my post about another real-life refreshment room in Hampshire.)
I have owned the Brief Encounter DVD for many years and I never, ever, ever tire of watching it. It’s a love story – a sad love story – and stars Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard (whom I adore).
The Brief Encounter Story
At a railway station refreshment room, housewife Laura Jesson meets doctor Alec Harvey. Although they are both already married, they gradually fall in love with each other. They continue to meet every Thursday at the station, although they know that their love is impossible.
The film was released amid the social and cultural context of the Second World War when ‘brief encounters’ were thought to be commonplace.
If you have never seen it, I strongly encourage you to buy a copy of the Brief Encounter DVD, brew yourself a pot of tea, and spend a couple of blissful hours watching this beloved English film. It will satisfy every tea-drinking Anglophile film fan.
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I'm Denise, an American expat Anglophile living in Surrey, England. Rather conveniently, I love tea. The longer I live in this enchanted land and the more I see and do, the more I discover that in one way or another almost everything here has a tea connection. 
