The Passionate Friends (1949) on Netflix
Mary Justin is on holiday beside a Swiss lake with her older husband, Howard. In the adjoining room is Steven Stratton, the man she loved and refused to marry nine years earlier.
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- Netflix3.7/5
- IMDb7.2/103,675 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes75%
Trailer
Plot summary
Mary Justin is at a hotel on a Swiss lake with her older husband, Howard, her first holiday with him in years. Half asleep, she notices a man being shown into the room next door. Her memory returns to a New Year party nine years before, and to Steven Stratton, whom she had loved and whose proposal she turned down because she wanted to belong to herself. Howard later travels to Germany and Italy on business. Steven telephones, and Mary visits his apartment for lunch; as the sun sets they kiss, and an affair begins. Howard returns, and Mary and Steven agree that he ought to know.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Passionate Friends (1949)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- David Lean and Ann Todd, both married to other people, fell in love while making The Passionate Friends and left their spouses to marry each other.
- Filming began under Ronald Neame with only forty pages of the script written; after a few unhappy days, when Neame said Ann Todd 'played up' because she was unsure of her character, it was shut down and David Lean took over the film.
- Ronald Neame was originally to direct, with Ann Todd, Marius Goring and Claude Rains as the three stars, but his Cineguild partners Stanley Haynes and David Lean called the script poor, so filming was postponed while Eric Ambler rewrote it.
- The conflict behind the scenes on The Passionate Friends contributed to the disintegration of the production company Cineguild.
