Brief Encounter (1974 film) Brief Encounter (1974 film) Brief Encounter is a 1974 British-Italian television film starring Richard Burton and Sophia Loren, adapted from the play "Still Life" by Noël Coward. The plot of the film is about two strangers, both married to others, who meet in a railway station and find themselves in a brief but intense affair. The material was previously the basis for the David Lean film "Brief Encounter" (1945). Burton was cast at the last moment, after Robert Shaw dropped out. The film had its premiere on U.S. television on 12 November 1974 as part of the "Hallmark Hall of
Cultural impact of Noël Coward in 1998. The Noël Coward Theatre in St Martin's Lane, originally called the New Theatre, was renamed in his honour in 2006. The playwright John Osborne said, "Mr Coward is his own invention and contribution to this century. Anyone who cannot see that should keep well away from the theatre." Kenneth Tynan wrote in 1964, "Even the youngest of us will know, in fifty years' time, exactly what we mean by 'a very Noel Coward sort of person'." "The Times" said of him, "None of the great figures of the English theatre has been more versatile than he," and the