A British woman, Mary, travels in a plane to a hotel along the Swiss Alps. Unbeknownst to her, Steven accidentally also booked at the same hotel, next to her... Nine years ago, Steven and Mary were madly in love, and he proposed her, but she rejected him because she "wanted to belong to herself". Shortly after, Mary was married anyway, to Howard, a rich banker. However, passion ignites between Steven and Mary again, and they secretly met. Howard caught them when they were not on a planned theater visit. Mary then admitted her affection and asked Steven to leave from her life... Back in present, Mary and Steven meet at the hotel and go to spend some time on the mountains. Howard shows up, catches them again, and files for divorce. Upon seeing that Steven is now married to another woman, Mary decides to abandon him. However, Howard still wants the divorce. Mary intends to kill herself by jumping in front of a subway train, but is saved by Howard and them reconcile.
A sort of restructuring of his own previous film, "Brief Encounter", this love triangle between a married woman and another man she loves is a good, though not a great film from director David Lean. Two great sequences: in the first one, Mary feigns she is going to see a play at the theater with Steven, but her busy husband Howard is suspicious. He notices that she went off, but forgot to take the two tickets with her. Howard then goes to the theater himself and looks at the marked tickets, spotting just two empty seats, while the mood is brilliantly completed by sounds of laughter from the play in the background. As Mary returns, Howard invites Steven inside, and then asks them about the play, in a very tense and revealing questioning that unravels almost like a ticking time bomb, with the inevitable outcome. In the second one, Mary meets Steven again after nine years at her Swiss vacation, and he tells her he married in the meantime and had two kids. As they have a picnic on the mountain, Mary has a vision of that moment, that she asks him the same question, but imagines that he answered that he could "never marry anybody else" but her, instead, and that they kissed. While the movie flows elegantly and smoothly, the rest of its events never quite reach the high level of the said two emotional sequences. Lean explores their emotional states, but the whole thing doesn't quite seem genuine due to the dishonest, two-faced character of Mary (who claims she doesn't want to marry, but then marries a rich banker, anyway) and the tendency of the story to slow down almost to the point of a soap opera at times.
Grade:++
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