People usually associate David Lean with "larger-than-life" film spectacles like *The Bridge on the River Kwai*, *Lawrence of Arabia* and *Doctor Zhivago*. However, the most beloved of all his films isn't among that group—it is *Brief Encounter*, a relatively cheap, black-and-white and seemingly unattractive 1945 melodrama about the most prosaic characters imaginable, set in the most prosaic surroundings, so differe…