Part of the Ted Walch series: Two Love Stories from Classic Cinema
 
Two of the most moving love stories ever filmed burrow inside us with that exquisite pain that marks any great love story.  Both movies burn white hot, one with a gentle flame and the other with blowtorch intensity, making viewers ache at every moment for lasting loves that cannot be.
 
David Lean’s exquisite BRIEF ENCOUNTER (1945) polled for many years in Britain as “the best romantic movie of all time.”  Still beloved today, this story, based on a play by Noel Coward, tells the story of two persons who find in a brief encounter outside marriage a love too strong to survive the mores and practices its time. Starring Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard. NR, 86 min.
 
George Stevens’ heartbreaking A PLACE IN THE SUN (1951), “a true classic of American cinema,” gives us a story of love so big, so bold, and so dangerous that it exacts the ultimate cost and sacrifice. Starring Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift. NR, 122 min.

Ted Walch holds The Ted Walch Chair for Cinema Studies and Performing Arts at Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles. He is co-host of Classic Movie Must, a podcast that recently featured him and co-host Max Baril in conversation with Tom Hanks about 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. He just finished writing What Are We Going to Do About the Kid? Making Mischief and Memoir with The 400 Blows. Walch is an annual guest lecturer at the Starlight Room, his favorite place to talk about movies.