EarDelightBase Waste of Money.

Organnall Too much about the plot just didn't add up, the writing was bad, some of the scenes were cringey and awkward,

Cristal The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Francene Odetta It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

BILLYBOY-10 I hear David Lean married his star Ann Todd during the filming of this flick so that would explain the inordinate number of grueling close-ups of the ever suffering Mary in this long drawn-out soapy melodrama.Mary loves Steve and vice-verse but she wont marry him because she wants to be herself or whatever and she is last seen fleeing the scene. The movies begins at a ball in or around 1948 then a flash-back to another ball 1938-39 new years, then a flash-back within a flash-back at scenes of love and love. Confusion ensues, at least for me because I'm not sure if it's suppose to be circa 1948 or flash- back #1 or #2. Anyway, Mary ends up marrying much older but ironically filthy wealthy banker Claude Raines (bad toupee) because she likes his money and their twin beds.Then she meets Steve again and loves him again and they have an affair and she is gonna leave Claude for Steve but doesn't but then he wants a divorce and she doesn't and then he kicks her out of the mansion and she goes down the near-by tube station to plunge herself in front of a train but Claude miraculously appears and saves here and they go off to the mansion and I guess live miserably ever-after (meanwhile Steve has married and has two kids and seems happy or not, I'm not sure). I never heard of this film before (no wonder) and only watched it on FilmStruck because of David Lean. Well, you can't win them all.

Sherparsa stupid title for a review?maybe ...well, it's not DL's works that have issues (they don't really, he's one of the best directors ever!) but it's me ...i have been in this kind of 'over-saturated sensational mood' for at least four decades now, i just can't control bursting into tears (or laughs) when watching a great movie ...so, that's why i say don't watch David Lean's movies if you like his (or any other great director's) works in fact ...i mean just as there is a limit to how things can go wrong, there's also a limit to how something can be so good just as well ... but in case of masterpieces of cinema or music or painting whatever, that's how it works: it is SO good it knows no boundaries and floats across the entire Universe like Dark Energy or Sunlight so strongly i can't watch it or i may get a heart attack or something! i remember when i saw Doctor Zhivago for example (and i saw it at least two decades after it was made, on videotape and on a 24" monitor) i couldn't sleep the entire night, thinking and wondering about what i had just watched ...this movie here, Passionate Friends, is not as 'big' as DZ or Laurence of Arabia in terms of big screen production and fame, and it's older than both too, but it's no less great either imo! and that's what makes it even more deeply penetrating into the viewer's mind and heart when you think you're dealing with a regular movie for entertainment purpose only but then you find out you're there for much more than that ... surely the original story itself by Wells is great too, so, we're having two masters of story telling here working together to dig deep into humanity's most intimate moments of love, desire, yearning, insecurity, lost opportunities and ...

Jem Odewahn David Lean's criminally underseen THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS has often been hastily dismissed as a weak "sequel" to his earlier masterpiece BRIEF ENCOUNTER. It's not. While it isn't the classic BRIEF ENCOUNTER is (not many films are), it has much to recommend. And it's not a sequel at all. Yes, it does deal with the same central theme of BRIEF ENCOUNTER (a married woman having an affair), and is a follow-up in the sense that the couple meet again years later, but the characters are entirely different. The film is told in a non-linear fashion, with lots of flashing forwards and backwards (it works well, yet is occasionally distracting). The plot basically is this: beautiful Mary (cool blonde Ann Todd, who had scored a huge hit with THE SEVENTH VEIL four years later and had recently married Lean) is in love with a young student Stephen (Trevor Howard), yet marries Claude Rains. Stephen and Mary drift into an affair after her marriage, and they are found out by an enraged (yet off-camera) Claude Rains. Years pass, and Todd, still the dutiful, notably childless wife of Rains, runs into Howard while they are both holidaying. The encounter is entirely innocent, yet Rains again finds out and assumes the pair are re-starting something that is now dead (Howard has since married, and had children). All this almost ends in tragedy, as Rains discovers how much Todd really does mean to him. Todd's somewhat detached screen presence works well for her character. The film is adapted from a short story by H.G Wells that explores an emancipated, beautiful young woman who rejects passion in favour of security. A poignant and telling scene between Howard and Todd early in the picture displays this notion- Howard:If two people love each other, they want to belong to each other. Todd: I want to belong to myself Howard: Then your life will be a failure Todd's marriage to Rains is a union of convenience. She can have the finer things in life she is accustomed to, she has the freedom to do as she pleases, and she's secure. Rains seems happy with this arrangement, telling himself that his love for her is also without true passion, until the crucial, revealing final scenes. These scenes constitute some of Rain's finest emotional work on film, as he spits at Ann Todd that she has treated him with all the kindness "that she would treat a dog". Rains comes to realise that his love for Mary is indeed "of the romantic kind", the same love that he denounces to Howard earlier in the picture. However, Todd, trance-like and thinking she has ruined several lives (potentially breaking up Howard's marriage, and also her own), walks to the train station and tries to commit suicide, ANNA KARENINA-like (she gets her own Garbo moment!). Rains, having followed her, pulls her back and takes her back home with him. While not a comforting ending, it seems to fit the picture well . As I said earlier, Rains is excellent, and this is one of his best performances. Unfortunately audiences tend to take the wonderful Trevor Howard for granted, and he is always an assured presence. Todd's beauty seems to be worshiped by husband Lean who gives her plenty of exquisite close-ups. As with THE SEVENTH VEIL, Todd is asked to carry much of the narrative weight of the film (the flashbacks and so forth), yet she works well and is particularly effective in a painfully bittersweet scene in which she imagines Howard as her husband, taking her into her arms, instead of Rains.

theowinthrop I think that most people will admit that Claude Rains was one of those character actors who transcended their lack of handsome features (or likable features) to be a real movie star - even though most of their roles were types involved in the plot for better or ill. He is in that select group with Basil Rathbone, Charles Laughton, Sidney Greenstreet, Laird Cregar, Vincent Price, George Sanders, Boris Karloff who dominate films they pop up in even though they are not the hero. When they are the hero, when Rathbone is Holmes or Sanders Uncle Harry or Laughton is Sir Wilfred in WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION we are especially happy. Rains too occasionally played nice guys, although with an edge. In the late 1940s he twice appeared as a wronged husband, first in Mitchell Leisin's SONG OF SURRENDER (1946) and once in David Lean's THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS. SONG OF SURRENDER (with Wanda Hendrix and MacDonald Carey) is the weaker of the two films, but has some good touches by Leisin's direction and due to Rains' acting. THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS has a better, more brittle screenplay, and David Lean's direction complements Rains' performance. Rains is the husband of Todd, who on a vacation meets Howard. In a sense this film is a kind of inverse version of BRIEF ENCOUNTER (which also was directed by Lean, and starred Howard), but that film concentrated on the sad, inevitably doomed love of the two middle aged people who cannot marry each other. Here we are seeing the triangle from the point of view of the husband - in the earlier film, Celia Johnson's husband was a cypher who only seemed to come alive at the tail end of the film. Rains is not immediately seen, but he is in the center of events from the start.For Rains quickly learns of the affair. British people are supposed to be quiet about their private lives, and they don't like the snooping of others in hearing about their problems. So when he first appears to confront Howard and Todd it is in the flat he and Todd live in. He is polite but quietly outlines what he knows, and Howard at the tail end suggests that possibly he (Howard should leave). Very effectively we hear Rains marvelous speaking voice spitting out (one can imagine him shaking with anger) "GET OUT OF HERE!" The film follows the relations of the trio. Try as she does to avoid Howard, Todd keeps returning to him. Rains ignores the facts as much as possible, but finally when he is to meet Todd at a vacation hotel, he realizes that the behavior of everyone on the staff is proof that she has been seen there with Howard. There is again an explosion, and the marriage seems doomed.I saw THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS only once in the early 1980s, and it amazed me for telling about a sexual triangle simply and with dignity - and for giving the husband (finally) equal time to present his case - for the highpoint is a speech near the end when the depth of the real emotions of Rains pours out - when his care for Todd is fully expressed. Rains had many great moments on screen, but in all honesty this was his most human moment. For that alone the film is worth remembering.