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The next year Mark and Gladys were remarried and now live with their two adopted five-year-olds (Mark and Gladys), an English bulldog and two Pekingese in a Hollywood house that boasts almost as many bars as bathrooms.
Brief Encounter (J. Arthur Rank) and They Were Sisters (Rank-Universal) are pat examples of good and not-so-good British moviemaking.
They Were Sisters is imitation Hollywood. Starring James Mason, whose talent for scowling his way through romantic-sadist roles has won him an avid U.S. following, the picture is overplotted, overacted, overlong. Its overdose of sentimentality—a drug Hollywood administers superbly—is something the British frequently fumble.
Brief Encounter, adapted from one of Noel Coward's Tonight at 8:30 playlets, is a heart-throbbing little valentine made with great skill. A fragile tale about a suburban matron (Celia Johnson) who falls in love with a doctor (Trevor Howard), it is a plausible, intelligently told romance, filmed with disturbing realism. Both frustrated lovers are married and have families. Since they are nice, near middleaged, perfectly respectable English people, they know from the beginning that their romance is both hopeless and doomed.
Actress Celia Johnson in no way resembles what U.S. moviegoers have learned to expect of a suburban matron (i.e., a professional beauty with all her assets amplified by Westmore make-up and Irene gowns). Miss Johnson seems to be exactly what the plot calls for: thirtyish, of middling looks and income, the mother of two children. She has an imperfect hairdo, a few undisguised wrinkles, often gets caught in unflattering camera angles, appears more than once in the same old none-too-chic hat.
When they are making a movie about average people, the British apparently do not know how to turn their heroines—and thus their plots—into something more gorgeous than life. The fault has merits. Hollywood glamor experts will pity, but they might also give some thoughtful study to Brief Encounter's low-budget details.
Claudia and David (20th Century-Fox) have now been married long enough to be the parents of a three-year-old son—but they are still sparring and sparking like honeymooners. This adroit, polished, sweetly sentimental sequel to Claudia (1943) carries on with the marital ups & downs of the young architect (Robert Young) and his pleasantly nitwit child bride (Dorothy McGuire).
Admirers of the Rose Franken magazine stories, play, radio serial, book and the first movie know about what to expect of Claudia. In real life, she would doubtless drive even a less excitable type than David to drink, Reno or assault & battery. In fiction, the young couple's incompatibility merely inspires piquant plot complications, which are played mostly for laughs.
If the sequels continue, Claudia may eventually be a fluttery great-grandmother, still blithely parking in front of fireplugs and flying into jealous tantrums about her husband's business appointments. Thus far, the Claudia and David marriage has progressed only to harmless misunderstandings about the Other Woman (Mary Astor) and the Other Man (John Sutton).