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Ignore the voices who claim that Brief Encounter is the epitome of sexless, class-bound and emotionally timid British cinema. Directed by David Lean and scripted by Noel Coward from his own play Still Life, this account of an unconsummated love affair remains a poignant illustration of how social conventions can crush an individual's dreams of happiness. Celia Johnson stars as the middle-class wife and mother, who's filled with guilt after falling for Trevor Howard's married doctor.

The beginning of Brief Encounter is also its end. Laura (Johnson) returns home from the station to her reliable husband and two young children, and from her armchair recollects her failed affair, with her voice-over observing that "nothing lasts really, neither happiness nor despair". The bulk of the film is then her subjective memory of events, a reverie which allows us access to her thoughts, feelings and fantasies. That her relationship with Alec (Howard) hinges on their joint fear of being discovered and shamed - at one point she is terrified at being addressed by a passing policeman - suggests a gay subtext, especially given the identity of the writer Coward and the historical era.

"A NOIRISH EDGE"

Crucial to Brief Encounter's impact is the the soundtrack of Rachmaninov's 2nd Piano Concerto, which dramatizes the yearnings of the reticent lovers. Robert Krasker's monochrome cinematography, meanwhile, invests an everyday world with a noirish edge: hence the repeated shots of clocks and watches, and of rushing trains billowing smoke, which indicate time's passing. Yes the RADA-trained accents of Johnson and Howard seem terribly quaint in 2006, and the working-class characters are restricted to stock comedic roles. Yet aided by the restrained performances, Brief Encounter's vision of forbidden love endures.