The Astonished Heart (film) The Astonished Heart (film) The Astonished Heart is a 1950 British drama film directed by Terence Fisher. It stars Celia Johnson, Noël Coward, and Margaret Leighton, and is based on Coward's play "The Astonished Heart" from his cycle of ten plays, "". Inspired by the great success of the 1945 film "Brief Encounter", which also had been adapted from "Tonight at 8:30", Coward agreed to have "The Astonished Heart" produced as a motion picture. As with the previous film, Coward also wrote the screenplay. Production began in 1949 and featured not only Noël Coward in one of his rare film
Post Mortem (Coward play) The play was not professionally presented on stage until 1992, two decades after Coward's death. Critical opinion has generally agreed with Coward about the effectiveness of the play onstage, although it includes some techniques that Coward used elsewhere with greater success. In 1930, Coward briefly played the role of Stanhope in R. C. Sherriff's play "Journey's End", set in the trenches of World War I. He did not consider his performance successful, writing afterwards that his audience "politely watched me take a fine part in a fine play and throw it into the alley." However, he was "strongly affected by