Critics reviews

I found the slippery chronology a challenge to follow, but love Muratova's adventurous eye. Meandering tilts and zooms keeps tabs on the characters while also scoping out the interior design that surrounds them. Windows and doorways structure the action. Given that a major subplot involves repeated housing inspections, the film is appropriately attentive to residential architecture.

What makes Brief Encounter a radical breach of the mores of its era is that it never condemns the lovers—the guilt that absorbs them is entirely their own. The two are trapped by their politeness and the fear that someone may suspect they are more than mere friends. Before Alec leaves, all he can do is gently squeeze Laura's shoulder goodbye. This is as far as their relationship will ever go—a light touch, but a heavy sin.

The film boldly plays around with time, spinning back and forth between then and now, from country to town, the characters closely observed with a nervy camera style and a sculptural use of light.

...In which the director stars as one third of a love triangle, the implications of which are revealed every bit as formally adventurously as this scarce film's reputation has long held, all flashbacks and shifting perspectives, yoked very much to a feminine point of view. Marvellous.

Told in elliptical, free-wheeling sequences and using an editing technique – fragmentary, jarring, layering multiple perspectives – I've only to date seen (and very much admired) in Lucien Pintilie's Sunday at 6, Brief Encounters is a symphonic work, marrying sound, image and provocative social observation to stunning effect (no surprise that it was banned for 20 years).