相见恨晚1945

——我想你不弹钢琴吧
——小的时候弹
——现在不弹了吧？
——不了，我丈夫一点也不懂音乐
——那就好……
——我或许有着极为专业的天赋和热情呢。
——啊，天，不会。
——为什么这么肯定？
——你太理智而且不复杂
——……，我想人不复杂是件好事，不过听起来很无趣就是了。
——你绝不会无趣
……
——你呢？
——我怎么了？
——每星期四来这里吗？
——是的，我采购一星期的物品，到图书馆换书，吃午饭，然后通常去看电影。不是太激动人的行程，不过是个改变。
——你今天下午去看电影吗？
——是的
——太巧了，我也是
——我以为你全天都得在医院。
——嗯，你可别告诉别人，今天上午我的两个病人死了。护士长对我非常生气，我就不敢回去了。
——你怎么这么傻
——说真的，我确实完成我的工作了。旷个工不要紧的。你介意我和你一起去吗？
——好的，我……
——我可以坐楼下你可以坐楼上……
——楼上太贵了……
（乐队忽然停止了，我们又开始笑个不停，我没有不详的预感，或许我本该有的。一切看上去那么自然，那么纯真。）

“When I behold upon the night starred face.,huge cloudy symbols of a high romance.”女主角劳拉一边沉浸在无法言及的隐秘情事中无法自拔，一边淡淡地回答了这句济慈的诗歌。“Romance”，劳拉不停地沉吟着丈夫字谜的答案，若有所思。接着，劳拉迫不及待地打开了留声机，房间里传来了拉赫玛尼诺夫的第二钢琴协奏曲。

窃以为济慈的这句诗歌是《相见恨晚》的题眼，又辅以拉赫玛尼诺夫的节奏，古典文学与古典音乐作为引导者，似乎不经意让四十年代那个远去的年代蒙上了一层熟悉感。谈及四十年代，印象中似乎往往是二战为主背景下宏大史诗，连你侬我侬男女情深之事也被逃脱不了“大时代小人物”的命运。《相见恨晚》诞生于世界二战结束的1945年，背景设为英国伦敦附近的城镇，故事中已经看不见战火的硝烟，中产阶级家庭的生活趋于平静。在这一年之前，战争的介入，社会的动荡，使得人们往往关心于你死我活的社会焦点事件，纠结于个人生死存亡，可以说无论是个体还是社会都处于生死攸关的激变之中，而电影的叙事通常侧重于强烈的戏剧冲突，往往表现惊心动魄、人命关天的重大命题抑或个人坎坎坷坷的人生道路。战争的结束意味着转折点。西方尤其是以英国为首的国家逐渐向中产阶级社会过渡，社会内部呈现稳定，大多数人达到温饱。诸如失业等社会矛盾不再像战时那样突出，然而新的社会矛盾又出现了，《相见恨晚》中的女主角劳拉便在这样的社会背景下应运而生。

女主角劳拉不仅仅代表着一个个体，她似乎是一个符号，一个象征，被创作者赋予了时代的灵魂。首先，她是一个中产阶级家庭的家庭主妇。中产阶级意味着什么，电影的种种细节都在像我们表明：她平时无所事事常常搭火车去邻镇购物看电影，在酒吧优雅地喝一杯白兰地吃一口曲奇饼。在家喜欢读济慈，听拉赫玛尼诺夫，被儿女催促带着他们去看歌剧抑或杂技表演。可以说是物质生活满足，精神生活看上去也同样富裕。其次，众所周知，物质文明的发达会带来社会的异化和人与人之间的间离，尽管生活在繁华热闹的都市却免不了难以消遣的孤独，人与人之间每天不得不打交道，但真正的心灵沟通却少而又少，人际关系的危机构成了社会的障碍，这便是随着社会发展而产生的新矛盾。一方面，影片开头，老妇人看似熟络亲切的问候交谈，实则为满足自己的窥视欲和八卦心理，这引起了劳拉生理心理的双重反应。她对老妇人的絮叨显得头痛难忍，后又与丈夫抱怨“当人们装出一副很好的样子来，是不是很恶心？”不仅如此，当劳拉与哈威在街头被熟人撞见一起吃饭时，劳拉还必须刻意划清界限，摆出热情寒暄的样子，但一切却都免不了沦为日后人们口中的谈资。还有，哈威的朋友在意识到哈威带女人来公寓时，不听哈威解释便把他赶出了房间。人际关系的危机，隐藏在每个人周围，不带真诚的交流，让人心烦意乱。另一方面，在这种人际关系危机的矛盾之下，当影片初始，哈威认真地用手帕拭去劳拉泪眼中的那颗沙后，便注定了此种感情的不寻常，像是埋下了一颗真诚的情感种子，只待时机喷薄欲出，怕是生命中这种真诚的心灵沟通少之又少罢了，随后男女主人公的六次相遇像是为之作注解。除了人际关系的危机，也不应忽视个体内心深处的危机。人类是唯一一种会探求生命意义的生物，这种探求在衣食无忧时会愈加突出，因为只有在衣食无忧的大前提之下，人们才会思考内省类似的问题。劳拉也是如此，物质生活的满足并不代表生活的完美度，直到哈威拭去她眼睛中的沙粒，原本平静的生活彻底被打破，情感的巨变使生活有了理智无法操控的波澜。电影的情节线设置为两个陌生男女的情感演进，它将焦点从社会外在危机转移到了人与人之间的内部危机之中，将镜头对准人与人之间的关系和他们内心情感甚至于不成形的潜意识，这不得不说是时代的进步，电影剧作模式的创新。

值得玩味的是，世人公认英伦三岛与法兰西的风情、伊比利亚半岛的狂热相比，少了浪漫与激情，显得略为寡淡刻板。但导演大卫•里恩则以这部1945年的早期作品打破了以往人们的惯有印象。影片中男女主人公的六次相遇堪称经典，贯穿始终。情感由一开始的无意识到自我察觉，躁动的自我安慰，直至失去理智的一发不可收拾，期间借由台词、情节呈现出“发乎情，止于礼”的状态，由迷醉激情到回归道德的过程，体现出英国人不同于美国人的道德取舍，这种“导演手法”的取舍大致表现在两个方面。一方面是外部的制约：影片开头导演首先便选取了沉重的钟声与火车进站的轰鸣声，辅以拉赫玛尼诺夫第二钢琴协奏曲的开头八小节沉重的旋律，这种景象象征着无时无刻的社会约束力。此外熟人时不时打扰了两人正常的约会，让他们不得不重新自省审视自己的行为等等也都有所体现。另一方面是自我约束，女主角的独白贯穿其中，一直在刻意提醒自己重新回到正常轨道，重新回归“母亲”“妻子”的位置，一方面感慨“这种快乐不能持续”、被人撞见是“罪恶羞愧”的，一方面又自我安慰，“这次在车站能碰见他吧？”发誓“回到家中再也不见面了”，两个人下周四又如约相见。细腻的情感借由台词呈现，实为妙矣。尤其是哈威在谈及自己身为医生的“预防医学”理论时，其实也在潜意识里和盘托出自己对待这份感情的态度。“一种预防疾病的方法，值得50种治好的方法”，两个人一直在小心翼翼地抵御着最后的防线，防微杜渐，以预防的姿态去处理这份属于中年人的婚外情。

发乎情，止于礼，却也只能留下满满的惆怅，不圆满的结局。但是相比美国人的信马由缰，日本人樱花凋落般的东方式暗淡，英国人最终还是让理性与真情占了上风，留下了朦胧的光亮。刚才看到，有人引用了一句菲茨杰拉德。菲茨杰拉德说：“All life is just a progression toward, and then a recession from, one phrase—I love you.”（生活便是不断朝‘我爱你’这个字眼靠近的过程，然后又不停地退却），这个过程与电影中的开端结尾相呼应。开端，火车驶过，泪眼中多了一颗沙。结尾，火车驶过，风吹乱了头发，扰乱了心绪，望穿秋水也只好止步前行，感慨一句相见恨晚罢了。

1999年，BFI评出了英国影史百大影片排行榜，本片位居次席，仅在《第三个人》之后。影片打动我们的原因，不是因为David Lean的大名（获奥斯卡提名），不是因为男女主角的精彩演绎（女主角获奥斯卡提名），不是因为巧妙地倒序和细腻的独白（编剧亦获奥斯卡提名），不是因为娴熟的黑白光影或悦耳的钢琴协奏曲。它的伟大之处在于其准确描绘又真诚探讨了一个人类社会的无解难题：如果禁忌之恋发生了，你该怎么办？
人类历史最终选择一夫一妻的婚姻制度有其必然性和合理性，但不代表它是完美的。事实证明，一个人是可能同时爱上多个人的，而审美疲劳喜新厌旧本就是人之本性；这就意味着一个人在结婚之后，完全有可能再爱上另一个人，即使他/她仍保持着对当前伴侣的爱意。这个时候，对家庭的责任感和对道德谴责的害怕将约束着人们的出轨，就像剧中人那样，即使两情相悦难以自已，也只能“相见恨晚”，此情可待成追忆。他们纵然最终保持了贤妻良母和翩翩君子的良好形象，但他们失去的可能是一生难求的刻骨铭心的幸福。既然人都有追求幸福的权力，此时，谁又能说这样压抑人性的道德标准是百分百正确的呢？

In her On Female Identity and Writing by Women, Judith Kegan Gardiner observes: “the word ‘identity is paradoxical in itself, meaning both sameness and distinctiveness, and its contradictions proliferate when it is applied to women” (Gardiner 347). In the post-war era, it was obvious that, more distinctiveness was added to women’s identity.
According to Arthur Marwick, “In general the war meant a new economic and social freedom for women, the experience of which could never be entirely lost” (Marwick 160). The war had an enduring effect of liberation for women in Britain, which manifested itself in various aspects of their lives. In her enlightening book, Only Half Way to Paradise: Women in Post-war Britain: 1945-1968, Elizabeth Wilson probes into the condition of post-war women from different angles. Although she is critical that women still faced discrimination, oppression and inequity in post-war Britain, she makes it clear that they had become increasingly liberal, since they had more opportunities to work, more sexual freedom, higher levels of education and so on, and this was due to a combination of many social factors.
Liberation was undoubtedly great for women because it meant less repression and oppression, equality and more possibilities in life. However, it may also have exacerbated women’s identity crisis by adding more “distinctiveness”. According to Erik H. Erikson, identity crisis is caused by the loss of “a sense of personal sameness and historical continuity” (Erikson 17). In terms of individuals in the group of women, although the liberation they enjoyed in the post-war era brought them more possibilities in life, it also meant that they faced various kinds of predicament in which their original roles were challenged, and this led to uncertainty about their identity. Brief Encounter, A Taste of Honey and The Killing of Sister George are three post-war films which delineated women’s identity crisis. Although the protagonists in these films have some particularity, their encounters still represent some of the possible aggravation of inner turmoil women’s liberation may have brought to individuals. This essay aims to explore the particularity of the plights of identity crisis faced by the protagonists in the three films under the background of the communal changes to women’s lives in the post-war era.
Brief Encounter, directed by David Lynn, is based on Coward Noel's one-act play, Still Life. It depicts the unenduring affair between Laura Jesson, a "happily-married" middle-class house wife and mother and Alec Harvey, a married doctor. The extremely well-received film was released in the immediate post-war year, 1945. During the 1940s, British women experienced a series of transformations under the influence of the war. The labour shortage brought about increasing opportunities of paid work for women, which led to a conflict with motherhood. Since many women were away from home to work, the government began to provide nurseries, “thereby relieving mothers of a burden central to ideal motherhood” (Lant 154). Meanwhile, sexuality became more open. The Second World War was “a very romantic war”, and part of the reason for this was that cinemas (where the two main characters used to date) and dance halls “provided the ideal territory for romantic encounters” (Bruley 114). The total birth rate was falling, while illegitimacy was on the increase, and divorce rate rose rapidly. Married women were no longer “icons of ‘decency and stability’” (Lant 155).
This is the history background of Brief Encounter. It belongs to an age that the image “ideal motherhood” was shaken; therefore Laura’s plight is also encountered by the female audiences at that time. The increasingly liberate social mode enabled them to question their traditional role of mother and wife in marriage and see the possibility of free themselves from it, but many of them could not take the step for reasons like the lack of income or dare not to break the moral code.
Laura is cast as a representation of the women at that time. Her identity crisis is led by the conflict between her awaking self-awareness and the social role of wife and mother which she has always been playing.
In her interior confession to her husband Fred, Laura states:
“You see, we are a happily married couple and must never forget that. This is my home. You are my husband and my children are upstairs in bed. I’m a happily married woman; or rather I was until a few weeks ago. This is my whole world, or it was until a few weeks ago.”
This monologue suggests that, before her encounter with Alec, Laura had identified herself as a wife and a mother, which was not exciting but definitely secure. Addressing the state of “happily married” which she “must never forget”, she is actually defending the identity under threat, and this reflects her dissatisfaction with the marriage in which her individuality is gradually being obliterated. Being a housewife, Laura regards her family as being her “whole world”. As a result, she has to spend most of her time in a house which seems to be so cramped that even the music from the radio can be “deafening”. This restricted domestic space has led to the insufficiency of individual space, which reinforces her social role of mother and wife, but consistently hinders her from being herself. Laura’s monotonous daily life as a housewife is also tedious. When Alec asks her if she comes to town every week, she explains that her regular Thursday schedule which brings about the affair is “not a very exciting routine, but it makes a change.” Moreover, there is some distance exists between Laura and her husband. Having no income, she is sustained by her husband who is described as “kindly, unemotional and not delicate at all” and “not musical at all”. In the film we don’t see he has any leisure activities other than playing crossword puzzles. However, Laura is cast conversely as sensitive and romantic. She goes to cinema every Thursday, borrows Kate O’ Brien’s novel from Boots, listens to classical music and is referred to Fred as a “poetry addict” who is quite familiar with Keats’ poems. The couple seems to lack common interest. Consequently, although Fred seems to be a considerate and understanding husband, he can never fulfil Laura’s demand for romanticism and passion. Their affection is very much based on kinship.
 These facts illustrate that, although marriage provides Laura with material things and a feeling of safety, it simultaneously represses her desire for individuality, and this has been the most significant contributor to Laura’s identity crisis.
The inevitability of the affair is implied in their first encounter. Laura thanks Alec for getting the grit out of her eyes, saying that: “Lucky for me you were here.” Alec answered: “Anybody could have done it.” The conversation ingeniously suggests that the affair is ineluctable for Laura because of the contradiction between her family role and desire, and this explains why even the main male character, Alec, is ambiguously constructed --- he can be “anybody”.
The reason for Alec to have captivated Laura is predominately that their relationship is beyond marriage, which enables him to cater to Laura’s need to be desired, not as a wife and a mother, but as a woman. When Laura and Alec bare their souls to each other for the first time in the boathouse, Alec says he loves Laura for her “wide eyes”, the way she smiles, her “shyness”, and the way she laughs at his jokes. His words indicate that it is Laura’s femininity that he adores. Some feminists have made observations about the contradiction between sexuality and motherhood, that the stereotype of mothers tends to be unsexy, and even in its aesthetic form, it is hard “to imagine a mother as ‘something else besides a mother’” (Lant 157). Therefore, the relationship outside marriage with Alec enables Laura to briefly escape from the role of mother and be loved for her herself, for being an individual rather than because her of husband’s obligation to love her simply because they are married.
The extra-marital affair with Alec is led by Laura’s identity crisis, and inversely aggravates the crisis since she finds that her familial identity, which provides her with security, is under threat. Laura realises the peril when it occurs to her that Alec will not tell his wife about their date: “Then the first awful feeling of danger swept over me.” The affair has brought about ambiguity and confusion in terms of her family role. After she lies to Fred, she refers to herself as “a stranger in the house”. Moreover, although motherhood can restrict Laura, the affair, which could possibly have caused her to abandon her children, still runs against her maternal instinct and brings about a sense of guilt. When her son, Bobbie, is knocked down by a car after her first date with Alec, she regards it as being her “fault”, “a sort of punishment” and “an awful, sinister warning”. Also, she thinks that a boy she met in the botanical park who looks like Bobbie should have given her “a pang of consciousness”. Thirdly, as a middle-class white woman, she fears that breaking the moral code could be a source of marginalisation, because her self-identification is also formed from other’s judgment. She is so afraid of the immoral affair being known that, at the end of the date with Alec, she looks around after getting on the train to see if people are looking at her “as if they could read my [her] secret thoughts.” When the affair is discovered by Alec’s friend, she supposes she has been laughed at and thinks of herself as being “cheap and low”. After this incident, Laura ends her relationship with Alec and goes back to her husband. Nevertheless her confusion about her identity grows deeper.
Similar to Brief Encounter, A Taste of Honey is a female-centred film adapted from a play of the same name written by Shelagh Delaney. The play was first produced on the 27th May 1958, while the film was released in 1961, which suggests that the film reflects the landscape of post-war Britain from the 1950s to the beginning of the 1960s. During that period, the trend of women’s employment did not decline, although women’s working lives were intertwined with child-rearing. Part-time jobs were more popular, especially with married women (Bruley 123), and importance began to be attached to education. Although being treated inequitably with boys, more girls, including those from working-class families, had a better chance of being educated. According to Sue Bruley, this was also a period when “slowly, signs of a liberalisation of attitudes regarding sex were appearing.” The Kinsey Report helped to “create a climate in which sexual activity was demystified and women’s enjoyment of sex more openly recognised” A survey conducted in 1956 revealed that “two-fifths of first sexual intercourse was occurring before marriage” Meanwhile, young people became “more self-aware and self-centred” as disciplines were less strictly forced by their parents” (Bruley 135). This also constituted a reason for teenagers to become more sexually active, which led to a higher rate of teenage pregnancy.
According to Erickson, adolescence is a period of identity crisis because, during the progression from childhood to adulthood, it is quite common that the physical and psychological transformation causes a loss of the “sense of personal sameness” and “historical continuity”. Teenage pregnancy, which was faced by an increasing number of young females in that era, undoubtedly added some complexity to this situation. The predicament confronted by Jo, the protagonist in A Taste of Honey, is fairly representative; at the age of 16, she is made pregnant by her black sailor boyfriend.
Apart from the combined reasons for the teenage identity crisis, there is some particularity in Jo’s case, which is the conflict between her wish to be independent and her desire for maternal solicitude, which has continued from her childhood. There is an obvious reversal between the roles of the mother, Helen, and her daughter. Jo is “the more responsible of the two” (Wandor 40). Being a single mother herself, Helen immerses herself in sexual relationships with men and constantly neglects Jo’s interests, since she believes, “In any case, bearing a child does not put you under an obligation to it.” Although Jo has expressed her will to be independent by wanting a room of her own, her desire for maternal affection, as well as her childish possessive instincts, prevent her from truly detaching herself from Helen. Consequently, she is hostile toward her mother’s lover, Peter, blaming him for “planning to run off with my [her] old women”, and feels abandoned when Helen finally marries Peter. What is more, although she moves out in the hope of being independent, it can be perceived that Jo is looking for similar maternal care rather than the independence of adulthood in her relationship with the two male characters, Jimmie and Geoff. Jimmie, the sailor who has sex with Jo and makes her pregnant, is “as mother-surrogate as much as lover” (Lovell 371). Jimmie helps Jo to carry the big cases, which should have been carried by Helen, off the bus when they move to a new flat, and applies a bandage to Jo’s injured knee. Rather than the pursuit of adulthood, their sexual behaviour is more of a compensation for Helen’s abandonment of Jo, since it happens after Helen sends Jo home alone from Blackpool after her bitter wrangle with Peter. Being homosexual, Geoff’s feminine characteristics make him equally proficient at domestic tasks. According to Lovell, like Jimmie, he provides Jo with “the ‘mothering’ which Helen refuses” (Lovell 372). As a result, the unattained maternal love prevents Jo from growing up, and thus deepens her identity crisis.
Moreover, Jo’s crisis is further exacerbated by her adolescence pregnancy. As Terry Lovell observes, at the age of 16, she is “poised between childhood and womanhood, precipitated into adulthood by her affair with Jimmie and her pregnancy” (Lovell 374). It is unquestionable that she cannot bear the responsibility of being a mother, having not completely got rid of childhood herself, and therefore she detests and fears the sudden shift of roles. When talking about breast-feeding, she says: “I’m not having a little animal nibbling at me. It’s cannibalistic.” Then she states, “I hate motherhood.” Also, having seen a “filthy” boy and a dead baby mouse, her sense of refusing to take responsibility for sexuality and motherhood is evoked: “…Think of the harm she does having children… A bit of love and a bit of lust and there’y are. We don’t ask for life; we have it thrust upon us.” Her reflection again indicates that she was not prepared for motherhood and regards it as being something “thrust upon” her. In addition, because Jimmie’s father’s is black, the possibility of the child having a dark skin colour constitutes another factor which leads to the instability of Jo’s identity. When she sees the doll Geoff brings from a clinic for her to “practice a few holds” which is modelled on the mainstream, white, she becomes angry and bursts into tears because “the colour is wrong”. Then she pounds the doll furiously and shouts. “I’ll bash its brain out! I’ll kill it!” Her extreme behaviour reveals her fear of being marginalised by having a black baby, and furthermore, the fear of motherhood itself. Subsequently, she desperately admits, “I don’t want this child! I don’t want to be a mother!” After Helen is thrown out by Peter, Jo ultimately abandons her relationship with Geoffrey and comes back to her mother. This again attests to her identity crisis; being a mother, Jo is not able to cut herself off from childhood.

Apart from the sameness of being play-adapted and women-centred, by directly depicting lesbianism, The Killing of Sister George expresses a much more radical attitude toward women’s sexuality than Brief Encounter and A Taste of Honey. It also touches on the female professional life, which was not mentioned in the last two films. The film was released in 1968, thus it is placed under the historical background of the 1960s, the last decade before the women’s liberation movement. There was an increase in the number of professional women during the 1960s, although they were still discriminated against. People’s attitude toward sexuality became more liberal than in the 1950s, which was suggested by the rising illegitimacy, the wide usage of contraceptive pills, and the availability of legal abortions to women (Bruley 137-139). Moreover, in the 1960s the male and female youth were “far more visually alike”, although the gender behaviour had not markedly changed (136). Lesbianism, which is centralised in The Killing of Sister George, still remained largely invisible. Therefore, the attitude toward women’s homosexuality expressed in the film is actually more radical than the social reality. Nevertheless, as the first commercial lesbian film, it still betrayed the growing tendency for homosexual women to face up to their role and begin to be gradually accepted by society, as the women’s liberation movement, in which lesbians began to claim their rights, began to warm up in 1969 (149), the following year after the release of this film.
        Different from Laura and Jo, the protagonist, June Buckridge, is a professional woman, an actress in a soap opera of BBC, and also a lesbian. It seems that she benefits from the increasingly liberal society. Having a decent job, she is able to be economically independent of men, and she has also asserted her homosexuality by cohabiting with her much younger girl friend, Alice. However, these elements also constitute the factors of her identity crisis.
June’s profession as an actress has led to her identity crisis, because of the blurring of the boundary between the role she plays and her own identity. In the film, June has played the role of Sister George, a district nurse in a TV soap named Applehurst, for four years. Its popularity has meant that June’s own identity has been replaced by her part, since all the people in the film call her George rather than using her own name. Also, according to Mercy Croft, June’s superior at the BBC, she “is Sister George and far more so than June Buckridge”. Therefore, June loses her own identity to her public role. In addition, June also unconsciously blurs the boundary between her part and herself because of their sharp contrast. Sister George is a much respected character in the soap opera. She represents the mainstream values of British society, while in reality, June is an outsider, an alcoholic, abusive and aggressive middle-aged lesbian. Rather than facing up to herself and resolving her problems, June chooses to make the boundary between her role and herself vague, thus evading the sense of marginalisation in her own identity. When she tells Alice that Sister George is to be killed in the soap opera, she uses “me” to refer to her part, saying, “They are going to murder me”. This line shows her confusion between her role and herself, attests to the blurring of the boundary, and indicates her anxiety about losing her part. For her, the killing of Sister George is the obliteration of her own identity in a disguised form, because the two have been muddled up with one another for so long. As a result, she feels the loss of continuity and sameness in her own identity. Therefore, her profession evokes her identity crisis while bringing her economic independence.
June’s homosexuality also worsens her identity crisis. In the film, there is no obvious discrimination in people’s attitude toward June’s lesbianism. Thus, the tension between the couple is produced by their inner turmoil rather than external pressure. In her conversation with Betty, a prostitute, June expresses her desire for “love and affection”. However, she has never been able to have this in her relationship with Alice. In her Female Masculinity, Judith Halberstam refers to June as “an aggressive bully, a loudmouth dyke and an abusive lover”, and then points out that she is actually vulnerable and dignified (Halberstam 182). As a matter of fact, for June, controlling Alice physically and psychologically by abusing her is to get a sort of certainty about their relationship and herself. As Wandor observes, June’s domestic gender is male (Wandor 62). She has established something similar to masculine authority in their lesbian relationship. However, her loss of job leads to the disintegration of such authority, and consequently deepens her uncertainty about her identity.
        At the beginning of the film, the relationship between June and Alice is dominated by the former. The scene in which June forces Alice to eat her cigar butt reveals her initial domination, but also becomes a mark of the turning point in their power relationship. While chewing the cigar butt, Alice’s facial expression changes from disgust to enjoyment, and in this way, she makes the punishment a pleasure. Her behaviour signifies the loss of efficiency of June’s authority, as she states desperately, “Once you spoil something, you can never make it work again.” Significantly, this happens the first time June express her anxiety about losing her job, which reveals the impact of June’s job loss on their lesbian relationship. The change in their power relationship is partly caused by economic reasons. When Alice blames June for her frivolous behaviour in assaulting some nuns in a taxi, June says: “Kindly keep your foul-mouthed recollections to yourself and remember who pays the rent.” This denotes that June’s authority is based on her economic superiority to some degree, and is threatened by the possibility of losing her job. Alice answers: ‘Not for much longer, perhaps.” More importantly, their relationship changes because of June’s sense of inferiority after losing her part as Sister George. In fact, in her relationship with Alice, June has always used ferocity and brutality to disguise her inner vulnerability, and the trauma caused by the loss of her job actually makes her more dependent on Alice, and thus, June’s authority begins to collapse. When Alice finally leaves with Mrs. Croft, this signifies the end of June’s domestic role in the lesbian relationship. Interestingly, this happens after the crew’s farewell party for her, which indicates the end of her professional role. Having lost her professional and domestic roles, the continuity and sameness in her identity is destroyed. In the final scene, June walks into the TV studio, only to find that “even the bloody coffin is a fake”. Sitting in her ruined TV world, she desperately let out a “mooo!” like a cow. June’s reduction of herself to a non-human is evidence that she has totally sunk into an identity crisis.

It can be concluded from the above analysis that liberation does not necessarily means freedom for women. If women don’t look up to themselves and really question their role, liberation can pose threaten to the completeness of their identity. From the 1940s to the 1960s, although the social mode became increasingly liberal toward women, the three protagonists experienced the same plight of an identity crisis, caused by their inner turmoil rather than social circumstances in different forms. Therefore, to gain real freedom, apart from asserting their rights, it is equally important for women to go back to themselves, and question who they really are and what they really want.
                            Works Cited

Bruley, Sue. Women in Britain since 1900, London: Macmillan Press, 1999. Print.
Erikson, Erik. Identity: Youth and Crisis, New York City: W. W. Norton & Company, 1994. Print.
Gardiner, Judith Kegan. “On Female Identity and Writing by Women” Critical Inquiry, 8.2 (1981): 347-361. Web. 24 Apr. 2011.
Halberstam, Judith. Female Masculinity, Durham: Duke University Press, 1998. Print.
Lant, Antonia. Blackout: Reinventing Women for Wartime British Cinema, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992. Print.
Lovell, Terry. “Landscapes and Stories in 1960s British Realism” Screen, 31:4 (1990): 357-376. Web 2 May. 2011.
Marwick, Elizabeth. Only Half Way to Paradise: Women in Post-war Britain: 1945-1968, London: Routledge, 1980. Print.
Wandor, Michelene. Post-war British Drama: Looking Back in Gender, London: Routledge, 2001. Print.

It all started on an ordinary day in the most ordinary place in the world...当女主人公终于开始讲述她自己的故事的时候,我知道这个故事是...my cup of tea...

他们从相识到告别不过几个星期,不过一同渡过了几个下午...但是他们心里明白或许又是有点混乱的...她和他之间的关系是无法确切定义的...是的,brief encounter 是最合适的描述...当时光将一切冲淡,关于她和他之间的事,最妥贴的...不过就是这一场简短的相遇了.

他终于还是说出了This is the beginning of the end...虽然大家从一开始就心知肚明,这是他们之间所有的基调...但当他说出来的那刻,作为看客的我,还是落了泪的. 他们之间一定是有那一刻觉得彼此是如此靠近的,只是有些细碎的"意外"发生了,譬如:她被她的朋友在餐厅撞见她和他一道喝香槟; 又好比: 他的朋友提早回到了公寓,打断了他们那唯一可能的独处的机会, 她仓惶离去时留下来的丝巾却明白告诉了别人有个女人来过...于是她和他之间的所有戛然而止了，他们在相遇过后，各走各路...她告诉自己一切只是普通纯粹的碰个面，但内心却是个做错了事的小女孩，还有少年时代玫瑰色的梦...

第一次看得时候，并没有特别留意那个列车员和女掌柜之间的对话, 但其实他们之间也是一场相遇...Time and tide wait for no man...是的，总有那个最敏感的时刻，只是她和他都没有把握住，于是他们之间只是...不过...除却短暂的相遇，什么也没有发生过。

她和他，一个固定碰头的时间和地点，一座桥，一次游园，一段路，一段车程...还有火车.

最后她丈夫的那一句--Thank you for coming back to me...在长久相处的男女之间那些细微的变化其实是瞒不过彼此的眼睛的...她其实最清楚变化是什么时候发生的，她大约一直在冷眼旁观着,在他还在自欺和挣扎的时候.因为她知道他长久的过去里一直有她的参与, 仅这一点就足以和那短暂的插曲相抗衡,更不要说其他的了...

I shall see all this again but without you...

    “生活不就是不断的朝着我爱你这个字眼靠近，然后又不停的退却”–菲茨杰拉德

近日在家边的碟片铺中发现多了一些老电影的片子，相对不是那么出名，于是胡乱挑了几张。
其中有一张是《Brief Encounter》，昨日看完，有些感想，记下来。
电影写一个家庭主妇劳拉的日常生活，写她每周一次去城里采购食物，（二战刚刚结束，大概英国物质还是相对匮乏）用多余的时间去看一部电影，去借一本书，或者去和朋友们喝茶约会，然后再赶晚上的火车回家。至于家中，有善解人意的老公，和两个顽皮活泼的孩子。
这样普通，规律，日复一日的生活，直至有一天，在车站，有一粒煤灰吹进了她的眼帘。吹进的不只是她的眼帘，可能还有她的心。因为医生阿历克，正好也在候车。
因缘际会，劳拉和阿历克迅速认识，虽然他们的火车开往不同方向，却都是每周要来城里一次，万事皆备，故事自然发生。
编剧Noel Coward是个剧作家，他借劳拉的回忆倒叙，写了非常多的内心独白，还有两个人之间的对话。那些独白和对话你一听就知道是多么了不起的优美的文字。就是这样，编剧将他们的感情写得单纯美好，充满欲言又止的含蓄，还有必不可少的道德感的折磨。他们很自然的在一起，再后来又不得不他们分开。只是拥抱，挽手，接吻，婚外之恋如果都能这样发乎于情，止之于礼，叫人平添的只是些惆怅罢了。
何况这部影片还有个明亮的结尾。
丈夫其实发现了劳拉的不对劲，于是在结束时有这样一段对话。
当劳拉回忆到不能控制开始哭泣时，丈夫上去拥住劳拉
丈夫：你已经离开我们很远了
劳拉：是的
丈夫：欢迎你回来。
电影就此结束了，而劳拉应该又回到了普通，规律，日复一日的生活。
看完电影，也许你会想这恋情其实和道德没关系，只是可能会伤害了你爱的人。
让我喜爱这部电影的倒不是他们的恋情，而是那些丰富的细节，那些细节让你放慢脚步，静下心来看这60年前的黑白影像，寻求那些瞬间。
有些瞬间和你的记忆暗合，你才知道原来你敝帚的珍藏，也是许多人共同的情感：
当你想要安静的大把的时间来好好想一个人的时候，平时对你不理不睬的外部世界，这时候突然和你发生关联，可能是工作，很多的工作让你充忙，或者是有人要和你说话，不断的说话，而每一句话都让你绝望。
当你和谁谁就要分手，也许就是天涯的时候，时间即使你每一秒每一分钟的刻度，它还是走的太快，而那些交通工具总是准时，仿佛他们从不迟到一般，然后她转身离开。道别的那么绝然。你望着背影开始幻想她会又出现在你面前，告诉你她不想走了。然而最后她的声音只是出现在你的手机里，说她平安到达。

谁是Noel Coward？
因了这部电影，于是开始在谷歌上搜索编剧noel coward的信息，中文信息很少，用我蹩脚的英文看来，似乎是一位英国有名的剧作家，但是没有被翻译过来的作品。

我很高兴，我没有错过这部电影，我很遗憾我不能知道这个编剧更多。