Presented mainly in flashbacks as Johnson recalls the events of the previous few weeks, the story involves these two ordinary, middle class, married people who meet by chance at a train station, fall for each other, resist temptation and then part forever
Based on Coward's 1935 short one-act play Still Life (set in a railroad train station tea room), the story was expanded to include action in other settings.
There is a film noir feel to the movie, with dimly-lit interiors, dark train passageways and rainy streets providing a backdrop for this tale of doomed and frustrated love. But there's a big sense of romance too. The music of Rachmaninoff turns even the most ordinary visit to the park or a restaurant chime into a scene of extreme emotion. The couple's visit to the cinema where they watch a trailer for a forthcoming epic The Flames of Passion lets us know there's romantic fantasy going on.
This forties romantic tearjerker is a simple, but honest, social-melodrama, which aptly presents the qualities of English restraint.
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