

Brief Encounter
1945-11-24 · 86 min · ★ 7.7
Returning home from a shopping trip to a nearby town, bored suburban housewife Laura Jesson is thrown by happenstance into an acquaintance with virtuous doctor Alec Harvey. Their casual friendship soon develops during their weekly visits into something more emotionally fulfilling than either expected, and they must wrestle with the potential havoc their deepening relationship would have on their lives and the lives of those they love.
Trailers are previews, not full movies.
No authorized playback source configured. Use the legal watch options below.
Production details
- Directors
- David Lean
- Production companies
- Cineguild, J. Arthur Rank Organisation
- Countries
- United Kingdom
- Status
- Released
- Budget
- USD 1,200,000
Top Cast
Celia JohnsonLaura Jesson
Trevor HowardDr. Alec Harvey
Stanley HollowayAlbert Godby
Joyce CareyMyrtle Bagot
Cyril RaymondFred Jesson
Everley GreggDolly Messiter
Marjorie MarsMary Norton
Margaret BartonTea Room Assistant Beryl Walters
Alfie BassWaiter at the Royal (uncredited)
Wallace BoscoDoctor After Bobbie's Accident (uncredited)
Sydney BromleyJohnnie, the Second Soldier (uncredited)
Noël CowardTrain Station Announcer (uncredited)
Nuna DaveyHerminie Rolandson (uncredited)
Valentine DyallAlec's Friend Stephen Lynn (uncredited)
Irene HandlThe Cellist and Organist (uncredited)
Jack MayBoat Rental Man (uncredited)Title information and images are supplied by TMDb. Explore our discovery guide for advice on comparing metadata and legal viewing options.
Where to watch
Availability provided by JustWatch via TMDb. Offers can change. Provider links are listed on TMDb; full playback requires a separately authorized source.
Streaming
HBO Max Amazon Channel, FlixFling, HBO Max
Rental
Amazon Video, Apple TV Store, Fandango At Home, FlixFling
Purchase
Amazon Video, Apple TV Store, Fandango At Home, FlixFling
With ads
The Roku Channel, Pluto TV, Shout! Factory TV, YouTube Free, Plex, Plex Channel
View authorized watch options on TMDbSeasons & episodes
Recommendations

Three childhood friends, Martha, Walter and Sam, share a terrible secret. Over time, the ambitious Martha and the pusillanimous Walter have married. She is a cold businesswoman; he is the district attorney: a perfect combination to dominate the corrupt city of Iverstown at will. But the unexpected return of Sam, after years of absence, deeply disturbs the life of the odd couple.

In Colombia just after the Great War, an old man falls from a ladder; dying, he professes great love for his wife. After the funeral, a man calls on the widow - she dismisses him angrily. Flash back more than 50 years to the day Florentino Ariza, a telegraph boy, falls in love with Fermina Daza, the daughter of a mule trader.

A New York suburban couple's marriage goes dangerously awry when the wife indulges in an adulterous fling.

A young couple living in a Connecticut suburb during the mid-1950s struggle to come to terms with their personal problems while trying to raise their two children. Based on a novel by Richard Yates.

A gallerist risks her family and flourishing career when she enters into an affair with a talented painter and slowly loses control of her life.

Lester Burnham, a depressed suburban father in a mid-life crisis, decides to turn his hectic life around after developing an infatuation with his daughter's attractive friend.

A well-to-do husband who allows his wife to have affairs in order to avoid a divorce becomes a prime suspect in the disappearance of her lovers.

Following the death of his wife, a young father's hold on reality crumbles, and a strange presence begins to stalk him from the shadowy recesses of the apartment he shares with his two young sons.

A towering and fearless love story chronicling the lifelong relationship between Leonard Bernstein and Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein. A love letter to life and art, Maestro at its core is an emotionally epic portrayal of family and love.

Not long after they cross paths at an art gallery, architect Ray Reardon and hypnotically sensual Lena are married with children. But as strange incidents occur, Ray begins to realize he may not really know the woman he married.

A fatally ill mother with only two months to live creates a list of things she wants to do before she dies without telling her family of her illness.

Laura and Simon have been best friends since college. Over the years, they've realized their bond is more than platonic. Can they—and should they—risk everything to explore a love that has existed all along?

Kathy leaves the newspaper business to marry homicide detective Bill, but is frustrated by his lack of ambition and the banality of life in the suburbs. Her drive to advance Bill's career soon takes her down a dangerous path.

Housewives Alice and Celine are best friends and neighbours who seem to have it all. However, when a tragic accident shatters the harmony of their lives, guilt, suspicion and paranoia begin to unravel their sisterly bond.

The relationships of two couples become complicated and deceitful when the man from one couple meets the woman of the other.

As a filmmaker and his girlfriend return home from his movie premiere, smoldering tensions and painful revelations push them toward a romantic reckoning.

With his wife's disappearance having become the focus of an intense media circus, a man sees the spotlight turned on him when it's suspected that he may not be innocent.

A famous horror writer finds inspiration for her next book after she and her husband take in a young couple.

A talented young writer embarks on a creative odyssey when her teacher assigns a project that entangles them both.

In 1962 England, a young couple finds their idyllic romance colliding with issues of sexual freedom and societal pressure, leading to an awkward and fateful wedding night.
Similar titles

London, 1843. Ebenezer Scrooge, a bitter old man, despises the Christmas holiday. Over the course of Christmas Eve night he is visited by three ghosts to show him his past, present and future.

The misadventures of four groups of guests at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

One night, in a Los Angeles hospital, Dr. Flax attends to a seriously injured man who, apparently crazed, whispers mysterious and disconcerting words in French into her ear.

The first film in Rudolf Thome's "Forms of Love" trilogy is the most incisive. It's a comedy-drame chronicling the ups and downs in the relationship of an unmarried couple (Adriana Altaras, Vladimir Weigl). When she tries to persuade him that they should have a child, he escapes the controversy by becoming preoccupied with his new aquarium and microscope. Their struggles to settle their differences and accept new responsibilities are presented intelligently, realistically and with low-key wit and irony.

A dystopian, post-modern retelling of the Easter story.

A renowned physician falls under scrutiny when it's discovered his assistant is a former Nazi.

The social democrats of the sixties and seventies worked on their grand plan to build a highway network in Germany that every German citizen could reach within five minutes of their home. The little film hangs around between and on the streets of this network - where the country discos, pedestrian zones, shopping centers, hospitals and roads home are behind noise barriers.

After years of investigation, Assistant District Attorney Martin Ferguson has managed to build a solid case against an elusive gangster whose top lieutenant is about to testify.

A condemned murderer, in the process of being executed, relives the events that led to his being sentenced to die in the electric chair. Told in flashback, we witness a sleazy dancehall girl dupe a high rise riveter into marriage so she can live off of him. But when he loses his job and his marbles, she ends up supporting him with money from her side man--and misses no opportunity to rub it in his face that she's now supporting him in his emasculated state. As the animosity grows and things get more and more unbearable, he is eventually driven to desperate measures.

A student nurse falls in love with a young intern in 1910 Baltimore, but tragedy ensues when he contracts a fatal disease.

A little girl finds herself in a completely dark room, except for the spotlight that follows her. Parts of the room lit up when she interacts and keeps in touch with certain objects. With each part of the room uncovering, she starts learning about the person living in it and also herself.

A fictional account of the life of Japanese author Yukio Mishima, combining dramatizations of three of his novels and a depiction of the events of November 25th, 1970.

Two headstrong lovers navigate a turbulent relationship where passion and conflict intertwine, creating an intense emotional bond through their shared journey.

As the Algerian War draws to a close, a teenager with a girlfriend starts feeling homosexual urges for two of his classmates: a country boy, and a French-Algerian intellectual.

Julie, a daydreaming librarian, meets Céline, an enigmatic magician, and together they become the heroines of a time-warping adventure involving a haunted house, psychotropic candy, and a murder-mystery melodrama.

In late 19th century France, the Countess Louise, wife of a wealthy general, sells the earrings her husband gave her on their wedding day to pay off her secret debts, then claims to have lost them. Her husband quickly learns of the deceit, which is the beginning of many tragic misunderstandings, all involving the earrings, the general, the countess, and her new lover, the Italian Baron Donati.

Three childhood friends, Martha, Walter and Sam, share a terrible secret. Over time, the ambitious Martha and the pusillanimous Walter have married. She is a cold businesswoman; he is the district attorney: a perfect combination to dominate the corrupt city of Iverstown at will. But the unexpected return of Sam, after years of absence, deeply disturbs the life of the odd couple.

Bootleggers on the lam Frankie and Noll split up to evade capture by the police. Frankie is caught and jailed, but Noll manages to escape and open a posh New York City nightclub. 14 years later, Frankie is released from the clink and visits Noll with the intention of collecting his half of the nightclub's profits. But Noll, who has no intention of being so equitable, uses his ex-girlfriend Kay to divert Frankie from his intended goal.

A renowned professor is forced to reassess her life when she is diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer.

G-Man Jeff Crane poses as a crook to infiltrate the notorious Purple Gang, a band of hoodlums which preys upon other hoodlums. Orchestrating the jailbreak of the gang's leader, Crane joins him in a Dillinger-like flight across the country.