The Best Movie Of Each Year From 1925-2025
81. 1945 - Brief Encounter
Honourable Mentions: Dead of Night, Mildred Pierce, I Know Where I'm Going
The Second World War provoked some of the most revolutionary and fascinating pictures in the history of film, and within that period, 1945 emerges as perhaps the most fascinating year of all.
With the war drawing to a close and thoughts finally permitted to linger on the future, cameras that were once focused on the external were turned inwards, arriving to meet a moment of profound social and economic change. Such a feeling was carried most vociferously in the noir and horror genres - the latter of which received a landmark entry from Ealing Studios in 1945 with Dead of Night - but also in more traditional cinematic fare, most notably David Lean's Brief Encounter.
A story of temptation and moral conflict developed by the great Noël Coward from his own play, Still Life, Brief Encounter follows two married strangers in pre-war Britain and the crisis that accompanies an emotional affair they struggle to suppress. Lean's film offers a frank and yearning portrayal of desire and duty reflective of Britain's own wartime evolution, beautifully photographed by the great Robert Krasker.
It is one of the greatest British films ever made, and possibly the definitive doomed romance of cinema's golden age.