 Derek Malcolm included the film in his 2000 column "The Century of Films".The British historian Thomas Dixon notes that "Brief Encounter" "has become a classic example of a very modern and very British phenomenon – weeping over the stiff upper lip, crying at people not crying.The audiences for these wartime weepies could, through their own tears, provide something that was lacking in their own lives as well as those of the on-screen stoics they admired."