Brief encounter 1945 - The classic poignant love story

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IMDB rating: 8,1

Director: David Lean
Main Cast: Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard, Stanley Holloway, Cyril Raymond

"Based on Noel Coward's play 'Still Life', Brief Encounter is a romantic, bittersweet drama about two married people who meet by chance in a London railway station and carry on an intense love affair. A model of narrative restraint and emotional power, the movie won over post-war audiences with its fidelity to the ordinariness of its story and ambiance. Through subtle details of character, manner, expression (and a Rachmaninoff score), Lean reveals the profound impact of unexpected passion on the lives of his middle-class, middle-aged couple, despite the final restoration of routine. Praised for its feeling and its realism, including the lack of Hollywood-ized glamour of its stars Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard, Brief Encounter became a rare foreign import hit. Johnson won the New York Film Critics' Circle award for Best Actress, while the film garnered Oscar nominations for Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Screenplay. It was Lean's first great film, and its intimate romanticism reveals the skill at portraying human relationships that would distinguish his later, spectacular epics, such as Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965), Ryan's Daughter (1970), and A Passage to India (1984)." - www.allmovie.com

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In which we serve 1942 - A British wartime classic

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IMDB rating: 7,4

Directors: Noel Coward, David Lean
Main Cast: Noel Coward, Michael Wilding, James Donald, John Mills

"Few morale-boosting wartime films have retained their power and entertainment value as emphatically as Noël Coward's In Which We Serve. To witness Coward's sober, no-nonsense direction (in collaboration with his co-director/editor, David Lean) and to watch his straightforward portrayal of navy captain Kinross, one would never suspect that he'd built his theatrical reputation upon sophisticated drawing-room comedies and brittle, witty song lyrics. The real star of In Which We Serve is the British destroyer Torrin. Torpedoed in battle, the Torrin miraculously survives, and is brought back to English shores to be repaired. The paint is barely dry and the nuts and bolts barely in place before the Torrin is pressed into duty during the Dunkirk evacuation. The noble vessel is finally sunk after being dive-bombed in Crete, but many of the crew members survive. As they cling to the wreckage awaiting rescue, Coward and his men flash back to their homes and loved ones, and, in so doing, recall anew just why they're fighting and for whom they're fighting. Next to Coward, the single most important of the film's characters is Shorty Blake, played by John Mills. (Trivia note: Mills' infant daughter Juliet Mills appears as Shorty's baby.) Even so, the emphasis in the film is on teamwork; here as elsewhere, there can be no stars in wartime.
The movie's most important attribute was also its least appreciated: its structure, which owed a great deal to Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941) in breaking up the action into flashback vignettes and non-linear storytelling. Coward and Lean had studied the Welles film closely in pre-production, and they applied its lessons about film narrative to a topical, contemporary action setting. In Which We Serve is arguably the popular film that best took the breakthroughs of Citizen Kane and ran with them into new dramatic territory." - www.allmovie.com

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Design for living 1933 - The classic Lubitsch touch in a not so faithful adaptation of Coward's play

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0023940/
IMDB rating: 7,6

Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Main Cast: Fredric March, Gary Cooper, Miriam Hopkins, Edward Everett Horton, Isabel Jewell, Jane Darwell

"Design for Living was based on the stage comedy by Noel Coward, though little of his dialogue actually made it to the screen. Playwright Fredric March and artist Gary Cooper both fall in love with Miriam Hopkins, an American living in Paris. Both men love the girl, and the girl can't make up her mind between the two men, so the threesome decide to move in together - strictly platonically, of course.
When first released, Design for Living was assailed for the incredible liberties it took in transferring the material from stage to the screen. Indeed, director Ernst Lubitsch and screenwriter Ben Hecht kept only a single line of dialogue from the witty, sparkling Noel Coward comedy - and that one line was hardly itself distinguished. In other hands, this would have been a recipe for disaster; fortunately, Lubitsch and Hecht were enormous talents themselves, and the film they concocted from the barebones of Coward's play is sharply observed, slightly daffy and a total delight. It's true that Gary Cooper is a little out of place in high-style comedy of this sort; he's a little too 'downhome' to pull off some of what is asked of him. Nevertheless, his natural charisma is sufficient to overcome this deficiency, and his innate masculinity is used to interesting effect. On the other hand, Fredric March is right at home, turning in a deliciously comic performance that never takes a false turn. He's matched by Miriam Hopkins, creating some subtly wonderful variations on a madcap theme and proving irresistible in whatever she does.
The subtle homosexual implications of the Noel Coward stage original were dissipated by the presence of the aggressively masculine Gary Cooper and Fredric March in the film version of Design for Living. Replacing these implications were the equally subtle but more 'mainstream' boudoir innuendos of director Ernst Lubitsch." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/design-for-living-v89216

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Private lives 1931 - Based upon one of Noel Coward's wittiest plays

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0022279/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
IMDB rating: 7,0

Director: Sidney Franklin
Main Cast: Norma Shearer, Robert Montgomery, Reginald Denny, Una Merkel, Jean Hersholt

"A fairly faithful adaptation of the classic Noel Coward stage play (virtually all of the witticisms, notably 'Some women should be struck regularly - like gongs' are left intact, though we truly miss 'You're looking lovely in this damned moonlight').
In Amanda and Elyot, Coward created a pair of joined-at-the-erotic-hip twins; while there was nothing particularly bawdy about them on-stage, they were still rather too frank (and frankly amoral) to totally withstand the censor's shears on film. Fortunately, the filmmakers were sensitive and judicious in their cutting, with the result that most of the humor - and more importantly, the flavor - of the original remains. True, there's a little of the edge missing, but that has more to do with the actors than the adaptation. Norma Shearer and Robert Montgomery are slightly too much the movie stars to play the parts with the total honesty that is called for, but their charm, timing, and bearing more than make up for this. Shearer, especially, understands the cadences of Coward's dialogue, but doesn't become enslaved to it. Reginald Denny has Victor's amusing insufferableness down pat, and Una Merkel is a winningly tiresome Sibyl.
The movie has been opened up from the stage play, sometimes to good effect, sometimes to little; however, the settings - especially the glorious Art Deco hotel - are noteworthy.
Private lives is played with such polish and expertise that we're willing to overlook the fact that only one of the four principals (Reginald Denny) is genuinely British." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/private-lives-v39315

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