A chance meeting between strangers is the catalyst for one of cinema’s most heart-breaking doomed love affairs in David Lean’s timeless film of Noël Coward’s play Still Life. Middle-class housewife Laura Jesson’s (Celia Johnson) weekly excursion to the pictures is interrupted one dull Thursday when Dr Alec Harvey (Trevor Howard) assists in the removal of some grit from her eye in the train station’s teashop. Both are in their early 40s, married with children, and otherwise happy, yet both are also lacking something in their lives they feel the other can offer. Agreeing to meet again, they are soon troubled to find their innocent and casual relationship developing into something deeper. Perfect in every aspect of its production, David Lean’s masterful film subtly conveys the thrill and danger of illicit love, and its attendant fallout and pain.

Notes by David O’Mahony.

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