The cinema was, and no doubt still is, the locus of chaste assignations and dates, but with thrill of sitting close to someone in the dark. This is true of Margaret and Roy in The Village and, of course,  Brief Encounter (1945). In the latter, Laura and Alec watch the  Flames of Passion (a fictitious film), and we hear her voiceover as they  leave cinema saying, “It was a terribly bad picture. We crept out before the end, rather furtively, as though we were committing a crime".