In the mid-1930s, Noel Coward wrote a cycle of nine one-act plays (not twelve, as Brownlow mistakenly asserts) under the collective title Tonightat 8:30. Coward later admitted,”I wrote the Tonightat 8:30 plays as vehicles for Gertrude Lawrence and myself.”They were presented in repertory on three sucessive nights in group of three. The third bill included Still Life, “the most mature play of the whole series,”according to Coward. “Later it was made into an excellent film and retitled Brief Encounter.I am fond of both the play and the film.”Still, he retained a slight bias in favor of the play:”It is well-written, economical, and well-constructed. The characters, I think are true; and I can say...that I am proud to have written it.”The cycle of plays premiered at London’s Phoenix Theater in May 1936, and the production moved successfully to Broadway, with Lawrence and Coward still playing the leads.
1930年代中期，Noel Coward以《今晚8：30》作品集为名一连写了9部独幕剧（而不是Brownlow声称的12部）。Coward后来承认：“我写这些剧主要是为了传播Gertrude Lawrence和自己的声名。”全部剧目由三个的剧团分三个夜晚演出并获得成功。最后一晚的节目单里包含了《Still Life》,Coward指出“这是整个系列里最成熟的一部剧。”“后来它被拍成了一部超凡的电影并更名为《相见恨晚》。”“剧和电影都很讨我喜欢”尽管他认为剧版略有瑕疵：“剧本写得很好，朴实无华，结构合理。我觉得人物也栩栩如生；可以说，我很自豪写了这部剧。”1936年5月这套剧在伦敦Phoenix剧院首演，接着它被成功引进到百老汇，仍然由Lawrence和Coward领衔。
Coward offered to write a preliminary screen treatment of Still Lifefor Lean when they discussed using it to follow Blithe Spirit. He “then persuaded David Lean, Ronnie Neame, and Tony Havelock-Allan to put it into production”: “This they agreed to do.”So A.R. Fulton is mistaken when he baldly declares that Coward alone wrote the screen adaptation.
当David Lean和Coward讨论了把《Still Life》改编成电影《欢乐的精灵》（Blithe Spirit）的想法的时候，Coward自告奋勇地提出由他来撰写故事纲要的初稿。Coward承诺道“我了解这部剧的前因后果，所以很快就能写好。”说到做到，两个星期之后Coward把一份名为《相见恨晚》的专业纲要交到了Lean手中。Coward说；“后来我劝说David Lean, Ronnie Neame和Tony Havelock-Allan一起来写剧本，他们同意了。”因此A.R.Fulton声称的Coward单独完成了整部剧本是错误的。
The Rank organization had purchased the screen rights to the entire cycle of nine plays but had not yet filmed any of them. When Cineguild sought to purchase the screen rights to Still Life, Rank, having lost interest in the project, insisted that Cineguild buy the rights to all nine plays. Later on, when Lean showed Rank a draft of the script for the film that he, Neame, and Have lock-Allan had prepared Rank’s interest was renewed, and he agreed to a distribution deal. A budget of £270,000 was agreed on-not a substantial one for a British film of the period.
Rank公司买下了整个系列9部剧的版权，但还没有将任何一部投拍成电影。当Cineguild电影公司来买《Still Life》版权的时候，Rank对这个项目已经失去了兴趣，坚持要把9部剧的版权打包出售。后来Lean给Rank看了四个人合力完成的剧本草稿，Rank公司又重新燃起了兴趣，他们同意了投拍这部电影。电影的预算定为27万英镑-对当时的英国电影制作来说不算宽裕。
Still Life, a short play that runs just under an hour, sketches out a tragic love story in five brief scenes. Dr:Alec Harvey and Laura Jesson meet by chance in a railway station and subsequently fall in love. But they mutually agree to part and return to their separate families for good.
《Still Life》作为一部时长不到一小时的短剧，通过5场戏勾画出一出爱情悲剧。Alec Harvey医生在火车站邂逅了Laura Jesson，两人坠入爱河。但他们还是约定彼此分开，回到各自的家庭。
In a 1947 essay on Brief Encounter, Lean writes that the plot remained essentially faithful to the stage play:”There was an unhappy ending to the main love story. The film was played in unglamorous setting; and the leading characters were approaching middle-age.’In sum:”A few years ago this would have been a recipe for box office disaster, but this wasn’t the case with Brief Encounter.
Lean在一份1947年关于《相见恨晚》的评论中写道电影忠实于舞台剧中的情节：“这是一个以破碎收尾的爱情故事。电影的设定缺乏魅力；领衔的主演已经接近中年”他总结道；“早些年这种片子会成为票房毒药，然而这一切没有在《相见恨晚》身上发生。”
Brief Encountersucceeded because of the “new realism,”mentioned above, that flourished in postwar British cinema. During the war, audiences had gotten used to the documentary realism employed in making even fiction film about the war, and afterward they continued to demand this kind of naturalism. More and more, films were shot on location, actors abandoned theatrical for more natural mannerisms, and a newsreel-like style was employed to photograph the action. There was no doubt, according to Lean, that Brief Encounterwas in the vanguard of films representing the new postwar realism.
《相见恨晚》取得的票房成功是因为二战后英国电影所兴起的“新现实主义”风气。战争期间，观众们已经习惯了将纪录片式的纪实手法运用于那些关于战争的剧情片，在战后他们延续了这种自然主义的需要。越来越多的电影使用实景拍摄，演员抛弃了舞台化的矫揉造作转而追求自然，同时由一种类似新闻纪录片的摄影来捕捉演员的动作。对Lean来说，《相见恨晚》毫无疑问走在了这批战后新现实主义电影的最前列。
Ronald Neame writes that he, Lean, and Havelock-Allan “transformed Noel’s somewhat static one-act play into an effective shooting script.”Lean decided that the story should be told in a complex pattern of flashbacks, even though in the play the events unfold in chronological order. After all, the flashback structure had worked very well in In Which We Serve. “Because of David”s choice of telling the story through flashback, we decided to have a narration spoken by Laura.”adds Neame.
Ronald Neame写道他，Lean和Havelock-Allan“把Noel的某些独幕的静态剧移植到了能够用于拍摄的电影剧本。”尽管在舞台剧里故事通过年代顺序逐步展开，Lean还是决定通过一段复杂的闪回来叙述整个故事。毕竟他的前一部电影《与祖国同在》中闪回结构获得了出色的效果。“出于Lean通过闪回叙述故事的选择，我们决定以Laura的口述开始叙事。”Neame补充说。
Accordingly, the events are seen through the eyes and mind of Laura, whose voice is the source of what we see and hear. Putting it another way, the voice-over narration comes out of the narrator”s conscious recall. In short, the camera shows us what happened while the narrator comments on the action. In this fashion, the film foregrounds Laura not only as the principal character but also as a presence-someone whose comments presented in voice-over color the viewer’s perception of events.
于是故事通过Laura的视角和意识呈现给观众，观众目睹到的故事来源于她的见闻和意识。换句话说，这些画外音式的叙事源自于叙述者自身的回忆。伴随着叙述者的评论，摄影机把发生的事情展现在我们面前。在这种方式下，电影的重心Laura不仅是故事的主角同时也以画外音评论的方式出现，在观众对故事的感知过程中添入主观色彩。
Having Laura narrate the whole story from her point of view was a felicitous decision. This is because “what Laura tells us about what is going on strong point of view with which to identify. Bruce Eder remarks, “Because Laura relives each incident that she recalls, she brings the viewer inside her psyche. Hence, she brings us closer to the central character than anyone might have expected”(emphasis added).
借由Laura的视角来叙述整个故事是非常恰当的选择。因为“Laura告诉我们她所碰到的事情，能够对画面叙述的内容形成补充。”实际上观众获得了一个有力的视角来辨析故事。”Bruce Eder特意补充道：“Laura通过重新体验回忆起的每一件事，将观众代入进她的灵魂。因此观众和角色的距离也被拉近到意想不到的程度。”
The screenplay introduces into the framing narrative the figure of Laura’s husband, Fred, who is only referred to inthe play’s dialogue. Laura sits near her husband in the library of their home as they listen to Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto no. 2 on the radio. As she recounts the story of her recent involvement with Alec in voice-over, she imagines that she is telling it all to Fred, but, in reality, she is talking to herself. For she would not want to hurt her husband by revealing her affair to him.
Laura丈夫Fred的形象，在舞台剧中只被对白提起过，而电影剧本里却借由影像叙事介绍给观众。Laura和丈夫在家里的书房坐着收听广播中的拉赫玛尼诺夫钢琴第二协奏曲。当她通过画外音叙述起和Alec的羁绊时，想象着自己对Fred坦白了一切。但在现实中却由于害怕说破这些风波会伤害到丈夫，她只能把事情锁在心里。
Since Still Lifeis a short play, the screenwriters could retain nearly all Coward’s original dialogue. One thing that particularly appealed to them about the play was the manner in which Coward could write dialogue that played against the action;that is, the characters say one thing but actually mean something quite different.
由于《Still Life》是出短剧，所以几乎Coward的所有对白都能被搬进电影剧本。有件事情要特别提到，Coward习惯在剧本里写下心口不一的对白。就是说，角色说的字句和真正要表达的弦外之音截然相反。
高清
