Brighton Rock (1947)
Directed by John Boulting

Film Review

The most celebrated film to come out of the Boulting brothers partnership is this superlative 1940s thriller based on a popular novel by the acclaimed English writer Graham Greene.  Brighton Rock is arguably the only true example of film noir in British cinema, a work which brings the distinctive look and feel of American thriller movies of the time to the cramped boarding houses and dingy back streets of a cosy English seaside resort. It's a very different kind of film from what we tend to associate with the Boulting brothers - anarchic comedies such as Private's Progress (1956), I'm All Right Jack (1959) and Heavens Above! (1963).

Whilst the film doesn't quite attain the almost nihilist harshness of Greene's novel, it is an evocative, at times deeply subversive work, offering the most cynical view of human nature.  The film is impregnated with a mood of dark psychological tension and biting pessimism that doesn't relent until the very last scene (which is the most notable departure from the original book).   The violence it depicts - fight sequences, brutal killings, razor slashings - was virtually unheard of in British cinema at the time, and it still retains some of its visceral shock value.

As in the novel, the film's thriller storyline is merely the basis for a complex morality play in which the attitudes and beliefs of the main protagonists are examined and contrasted.  On the surface, Pinkie is an evil psychopath with a dangerous power-complex.  Yet beneath this unblinking cool bravado there is a child with deep-rooted insecurities and a soul wrestling incessantly with the twisted vestigial remains of his religious teachings.  That Pinkie is bad is beyond dispute, but his behaviour is partly a mask to conceal his vulnerability and immense feeling of isolation.  He is a pathetic figure, unloved and incapable of loving, whose only talent is wilful destruction.  The extreme dual aspect of his nature is reflected in that of the film's location, which suggests something nasty beneath a veneer of anodyne normality.

If Pinkie represents irredeemable evil, Rose, the innocent girl he corrupts, is unsullied goodness.  Her blind faith in Pinkie is almost as disturbing as Pinkie's capacity for unthinking cruelty.  Repeatedly, she is described as foolish, yet she is the only character in the film who is at peace.  She is blind, but she is happy, and not even the purest manifestation of evil can alter the fact.  But, to a large extent, she is as bereft of humanity as Pinkie is.  We don't care what happens to her, because nothing that falls her way will change her.  Like her gangster husband, she is doomed to stay on the same unswerving path right until the end.   Can the similarity of their names - Pinkie and Rose - be a coincidence?

Between these two moral extremes are Pinkie's gang members, dominated by and secretly afraid of their leader, and Ida, a strong-willed middle-aged woman whose experiences have left her cynical, hard-nosed, but with an indefatigable desire to see justice done.  These are the more down-to-Earth characters, ones we can more readily identify with.  Unlike Pinkie and Rose, they have not been conditioned by Catholic thinking; their morality is based on a common sense notions of what is right and wrong.  It is they, acting on the impulse of conscience, who bring about Pinkie's destruction.  It is they alone who can make a moral choice and resolve the crisis - a demonstration of existentialist self-assertion that neither Pinkie or Rose can make, because their destiny has already been set in stone.

Complementing the film's beautifully atmospheric design and photography are some excellent contributions from some impressive actors.  In one of the best performances of his career Richard Attenborough (the future director of A Bridge Too Far and Gandhi) makes Pinkie Brown one of the most sinister figures in British cinema, aptly described by the film's American title: Young Scarface.  His portrayal is the perfect personification of psychotic evil, yet also subtly revealing the torment lying just beneath the seemingly implacable surface.  Hermione Baddeley makes an interesting female variant on unrelenting crime fighter, gutsy and colourful, and easily the most recognisably human character in the film.  Also memorable is William Hartnell, impressive in what was one of a long line of 'heavy' character roles, before he became more widely known as the first Doctor Who in the mid-1960s.

Although it may have lost some of its initial impact, Brighton Rock is still one of the great classics of British cinema.  It is a chilling, suspenseful thriller with some unforgettable sequences (such as the genuinely frightening murder scene in the ghost train at the start).  It is also a powerful, brutally honest, study of the weaknesses of human nature, with some very disturbing undertones that are typical of Graham Greene's staunchly Catholic philosophy of life.

Film Synopsis

Beneath its quaint, tourist-friendly surface impression, Brighton of the 1930s is a squalid town where gangland crime is rampant.  When the leader of his gang is killed, 17-year old Pinkie Brown takes revenge by murdering a journalist, Fred Hale.  To cover his tracks, he has no option but to marry a naive young waitress, Rose, who mistakes his interest in her for love.  He even has to kill one of his own gang to prevent Hale's death being traced back to him.  Pinkie isn't safe yet, however.  Before he died, Hale drew the attention of a promenade singer, Ida, a tough, no-nonsense woman who is increasingly convinced he was killed by Pinkie...