Excess David Lean completeism. To her eternal regret an Englishwoman chooses money, comfort, success in the form of a Toff husband over her true love, a uni lecturer everyman who succeeds on his own terms. Set on either side of WWII. She's played by Ann Todd, who looks to me like England's response to Ingrid Bergman. The men are Claude Rains, in decline after his major turns in Casablanca and Notorious, and Trevor Howard who was in The Third Man the same year (1949). I didn't get the point of this movie; was it a warning to the new Eves, the women who wanted or reasonably expected self-possession after their sacrifices for their country, that they shouldn't get ahead of themselves? That the upper classes suffer also in their way? That money can't buy you love but can lead to endless encounters with your object(s) of desire? Surprising me, H. G. Wells wrote the novel this is based on.
I guess it was a strange time in British cinema, when they had technique but not yet the raw material from the likes of Beckett and Pinter (who softened things up for Mike Leigh) or the guts and funding for Lawrence of Arabia. I think the Ealing comedies — and Lean's Hobson's Choice — were more successful than these dusty dramas. Then again, I wonder what Lean might have done with The Remains of the Day.
Terrence Rafferty on a Lean retrospective in 2008.