BRIEF ENCOUNTER (1945) Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard play "ordinary people" Laura Jesson and Dr.

Alec Harvey, and Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2-practically another character-plays the crashing, roiling wave of love that takes them both by surprise. "Noel Coward's Brief Encounter," as the movie is formally billed, was based on Coward's one-act play Still Life. It explores the deepening relationship between two married people of high morals who meet by chance in a train station. David Lean directed, pulling performances of understated passion from Johnson and Howard. Robert Krasker's black-and-white cinematography, justly admired for its shadows and fog, wears a darkness both sooty and soft. Renunciation can be beautiful, but it can also be bleak. The ending-Johnson's luminous eyes, Howard's Arthurian brow-is wrenching.