THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS Director: DAVID LEAN U.K 1949 BLACK AND WHITE 91 MIN. Book cinema tickets Based on a novel by h. G. Wells, this is a return to the emotional terrain of Brief Encounter, as a middle-class housewife (Ann todd, the third Mrs. Lean) finds herself torn between her dry financier husband and a dashing former sweetheart (trevor howard). the chief differences from the earlier film are the more lavish use of settings (from Alpine romance to near-suicide on the London underground) and a greater emphasis on the husband, here superbly played by Claude Rains, looking for all the world as if he is still on the rebound from the romantic bruising of Alfred hitchcock’s Notorious. Having seized the directing reins from Ronald neame, Lean pulls out all the stopselaborate play with light and shadow, symbolic use of mist and storms, and several sequences (like an electrifying scene involving some incriminating theatre tickets) that couldand indeed havebecome textbook examples of dynamic montage. ‘The Passionate Friends’ is showing second in a double bill with ‘Brief Encounter’. Director: DAVID LEAN U.K 1949 BLACK AND WHITE 91 MIN.