David Lean directed The Passionate Friends, a British romantic drama, based on a novel by H. G. Wells, revolving around a love triangle in which a woman cannot give up her affair with another man.
Grade: B- (*** out of *****)
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The film played at the 1949 Cannes Film Festival.
The story is told through the memories of a woman named Mary (played by Ann Todd) while on holiday in Switzerland waiting for her banker husband, Howard (Claude Rains), to join her.
It has been nine years since they have been on holiday, but also nine years since she last talked to the man she is in love with (Steven, played by Trevor Howard), who unknowing to her has been booked into the adjoining room.
The narrative then goes into the past and tells of the love between Mary and Steven, who she refuses to marry him, believing that their marriage would be too stifling. Steven counyters byclaiming that two people in love should want to “belong to each other.”
Mary insists that she wants only to ‘belong to herself’ and runs away as Steven tells her that her life would be ‘a failure’. She then marries Howard, who gives her stability and security.
When they meet again nine years later on New Year’s Eve, Steven is with his-girlfriend while Mary is with Howard. Howard dryly pretends not to recognize Steven “So the enemy wouldn’t know he was being observed.”
Steven later pursues Mary again and almost persuades her to change her mind and leave Howard. While Howard accepts his wife’s socializing with Steven, he notices they have forgotten their tickets for the theatre. They then lie to him when he inquires of their evening. In a dramatic scene Steven tells Howard Mary is in love with him and Howard should step aside, while Mary asks him to leave so she can talk things over with Howard.
Mary sends Steven a letter, but Steven goes to their residence and demands to see Mary. He sees Howard first, who tells him he knows and understands Mary, while Steven, despite being in love, hardly knows Mary at all. Howard understands that their marriage is not one of love, but one of affection and mutual freedom. Howard is confident that a marriage of love, where partners ‘belong’ to each other, was not what Mary wants, and all that is needed is for Mary and Steven to stay away from each other. Mary later confirms what Howard said and runs away before Steven can dissuade her.
The narrative returns to the holiday in the Swiss Alps as Mary and Steven meet again. Howard is once more absent due to banking work, and with Steven having a half a day before he has to return to London, they go by boat and cable car to picnic on a mountain. They talk of their lives and Steven reveals that he has two children with his wife. Mary asks him if he is happy, and seems happier herself that he is, but mixed expressions tell of regrets, as if she wishes herself in his wife’s place.
When they return, Howard has arrived early and happens to see them disembarking the boat together. As he goes to the couple’s suite, he notices the porter taking Steven’s suitcase from the adjoining room and is filled with suspicion. His pride is further hurt when Mary rushes by him to the terrace, not realizing he is there, to wave goodbye enthusiastically to Steven. He storms out when Mary turns and sees him, her feelings revealed on her face, and soon files for divorce against her, alleging adultery.
Steven’s family life is plunged into havoc. Mary decides she must save Steven and, meeting him for the last time, pretends that Howard has withdrawn the divorce, so that Steven can go back to his wife and happy life. She goes to Howard, asking him to stop the divorce by telling him nothing happened in the Swiss hotel and she was innocent of the adjoining room to Steven. Howard then tells her the divorce is not about that. He had not expected love from their marriage–only affection and loyalty. Instead he was given ‘the love you’d give a dog, the kindness you’d show a beggar, and the loyalty of a bad servant’.
Yelling for Mary to get out, he loses his temper and breaks a vase. He then calms down and retracts what he said in remorse, revealing that he has developed the type of romantic love for Mary he has always disdained, but Mary has already left.
Running out, Mary walks through a London Underground station in a trance. Standing on a platform with an incoming train, she dazedly contemplates the tracks. As the train approaches she draws dangerously close to the platform edge, but just as she is about to leap, someone catches her. It is Howard, who has come after her.
In the last scene, the couple reconcile on the platform, while Mary breaks down crying. Howard asks, “Shall we go home now, if you want?”
The film was originally going to be directed by producer Ronald Neame, who arranged for Eric Ambler to write and produce. The three stars were to be Ann Todd, Marius Goring and Claude Rains. Prior to filming, however, Neame’s partners in Cineguild, Stanley Haynes and David Lean, told Neame the script was poor and wanted it rewritten. Neame agreed, but his confidence was shaken. Filming was postponed while Ambler rewrote the script under the supervision of Lean and Haynes. It started under Neame’s direction with only forty pages of the script written. It proceeded for a few days but was an unhappy experience – Neame says Ann Todd “played up” as she was unsure of her character. Filming was shut down for the script to be completed and Lean to take over the film. Meanwhile, Trevor Howard replaced Marius Goring.
Lean and Todd, both married to other people, fell in love during the shoot, and left their spouses to get married. The conflict behind the scenes contributed to the disintegration of Cineguild
Though Passionate Friends is well executed by all concerned, inevitale comparisons were made with Lean’s previous romantic melodrama, the far superior Brief Encounter, which had also starred Trevor Howard. But, alas, Ann Todd, soon to become Lean’s wife, is not Celia Johnson. Todd’s harshly lined face makes her charcater distanced and her narration lack the subtle and sensitivity of Johnson’s in the 1945 picture.
All in all, it’s a second tier Lean movie, and one of few works that was a commercial failure upon initial release.
Cast
Claude Rains – Howard Justin
Ann Todd – Mary Justin
Trevor Howard – Professor Steven Stratton
Isabel Dean – Pat Stratton
Betty Ann Davies – Miss Layton
Credits:
Directed by David Lean
Written by Eric Ambler, Stanley Haynes, David Lean, H. G. Wells, based on The Passionate Friends, 1913 novel by H.G. Wells
Produced by Ronald Neame
Cinematography Guy Green
Edited by Geoffrey Foot
Music by Richard Addinsell
Production: Cineguild Productions
Distributed by General Film Distributors
Release date: January 26, 1949
Running time: 91 minutes
Budget £346,800
Box office £219,400
