So terribly heppy

[white_hart]

The current programme on Radio 4 (which appears to be about optimism and the reverse) just featured a film historian who appeared to think that the ending of Brief Encounter was utterly downbeat.

Personally, I have always thought that if she'd run off with Trevor Howard they'd only have ended up bickering after six months and hating the sight of each other after a year, and that going back to the kind if slightly dull husband was the right decision. This probably says a lot about me. And, indeed, about the film historian who clearly felt she should have run off with Trevor Howard.

Comments

[nineveh_uk]

I'm going to contest that Brief Encounter has a specifically happy ending; it certainly has a much better ending than if Laura had run off with Trevor Howard, who is clearly a louse*, but the possibility for a long-term life of quiet desperation with Fred is still there. There's nothing wrong with Fred, he's clearly a perfectly pleasant man who ultimately loves and trusts his wife, but though Laura has learned through the affair what isn't a solution to not being very heppy, the question of what to do instead about the factors that lead her to it is shelved. Though if there is about to be a war no doubt she will find things are going to change anyway!

*I saw a reading of the original play script with Harriet Walter and Alec Jennings, which gave a strong impression that Laura was simply the latest in a string of women that he had pulled this schtick on.