The Passionate Friends

For the first of three films starring his bride-to-be, Ann Todd, the masterful David Lean adapted this dark, wistful drama from a popular H.G. Wells novel. Todd plays Mary, a heartbroken wife torn between the security of her husband (a remarkable Claude Rains) and her lasting love for a man she hasn’t spoken to in nine years (Trevor Howard, in a role reminiscent of his star turn in Lean’s Brief Encounter five years before).