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
Blithe Spirit (play) his own view of things on the brute facts of existence," and Michael Billington of "The Guardian" wrote of Coward's influence on Harold Pinter. In 2004, Charles Spencer of "The Daily Telegraph" wrote, "With "Hay Fever" and "Private Lives", "Blithe Spirit" strikes me as being one of Coward 's three indisputable comic masterpieces. [It is] the outrageous frivolity with which Coward treats mortality that makes the piece so bracing." "Blithe Spirit" was made into a successful film in 1945, adapted by Coward and directed by David Lean. The cast included Rex Harrison as Charles, Constance Cummings as Ruth, Kay Hammond