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Brighton Rock: Turner Classic Movies British Film Guide
Steve Chibnall is Leader of the Film Studies pathway and Co-ordinator of the British Cinema and Television Research Group, De Montfort University, Leicester. He is the author of Get The British Film Guide 6 (I.B. Tauris).
128 pages, Paperback
First published November 12, 2005
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March 27, 2021
This was a detailed, if not exhaustive, study of the 1948 film based on the 1938 Graham Greene novel of the same name.
I had heard about the film, said to be an outstanding example of British noir, last year and when I could not find it in the library, I went ahead & actually purchased it thru Amazon, since I dislike watching films online (although no doubt it is on Youtube).
I watched the film once and couldn´t quite catch all the dialogue due to the local accents and/or slang, or understand what the ¨Kolley Kibbee¨ contest was about, so not all the elements of the plot were clear to me. Luckily, the DVD has a commentary track and optional English subtitles so I need to watch the film again with the English subtitles on and then also watch it with the commentary track. I was impressed with the film even though I don´t think I completely understood it, and so I borrowed the book which is the subject of this review from the library in hopes of finding a key to the mysteries of the movie.
The book does offer quite a bit of context, but in the end, I think I shall have to read the Greene novel to understand the nuances, the references to the novel in this book of film criticism. So the ¨Brighton Rock" project continues for me.
This is nonetheless an excellent book examining how the film came together including how the deal to produce the film came about, considerations as to censorship in both the UK and US, how the screenplay, written by Greene, stuck to or departed from the treatment of his novel by Terence Rattigan, how the movie was cast, details about the players - their background and their subsequent careers. This sort of detail of course gives a clue as to why certain players were picked to play given parts, and may suggest associations of each actor to prior parts or types not too accessible to a present-day, especially a non-British, viewer of the film, but the discussions of the casting decisions was interesting nonetheless. Richard Attenborough was the automatic choice for the lead because he had played the part of the protagonist Pinkie in the successful stage adaptation of Greene´s popular novel in London; his portrayal of Pinkie on film was the breakout role that made him a star.
Pinkie, from a seedy side of resort mecca Brighton the tourist hordes never see, during the Depression years of the 1930s, has become a minor member of a gang whose leader, Mr. Kite, an older man, an authority or father figure to Pinkie, has just been murdered because of an expose of the gang´s slots racket written by journalist Fred Hale. The leadership of the gang now falls to Pinkie, who then seeks revenge for the murder of Kite.
Young Pinkie has dead eyes and a dead soul: He has become a sociopath and his Catholic upbringing has further twisted his psyche in that it has given his paranoia about others and fear of death and loathing of sexuality a religious overlay. Rose, also a Catholic from the same slum neighborhood as Pinkie, however, remains not only good, but even deeply religious - practically saintly in thinking love can transform Pinkie. Pinkie, however, is only cynically using her - that is clear to the viewer, but she is blinded by her love of Pinkie and unable to understand that to him she is just another dupe.
By the time the film was made, a decade after the novel was written, Britain was in the midst of post-war reconstruction. There is an interesting section of the book that discusses the socio-political trends that informed the critical response to the movie in the UK which was mostly negative for a number of different reasons - but the film was nonetheless wildly popular at the British box office, in fact a smash hit, and is considered today one of the best British films ever made.
Here are some quotes from the book:
¨It is early February 1947 and Britain is in the grip of the worst winter in living memory. As demand for electricity soars, power cuts to domestic users last five hours per day and supplies to many businesses are suspended for days at a time."
¨The sense of community and social purpose nurtured during the war was melting away with the snow."
¨Fatalism in tragedy is necessarily related to a view of human nature as fixed and unchanging.¨
¨John Atkins once remarked that Greene ´tries to do for Pinkie what Milton did for Satan´. Through the character of Pinkie, Greene wanted his readers to experience the seductive power of evil evident in the boy´s relationship with Rose, a girl from the same hellish slum background who has nevertheless remained good."
¨The book is an early example of the tendency...for the noir thriller of the 1940s to be informed by popular psychoanalysis.¨
¨Like Greene, [the Boulting brothers] ... were fascinated by the contradictions of human nature, the messy complexities of reality that undermine the dogma of universal prescription; and in his novel they were shown the ´rock´ on which idealism founders.¨
¨...the social contrasts within the story´s setting: the two Brightons, the one cheek by jowl wit the other. Second, [the fragment of treatment] ... attempts to balance out the preoccupation with Pinkie by ensuring that at least one character [Rose] will have an existence independent of her relationship to him."
¨Genuine emotional melodrama was the tried-and-tested carrier of truths about good and evil."
¨For Greene, the palais de dance is a secular church where a crooner replaces the priest, singing of ´love of a kind, music of a kind, truth of a kind´ to a crowd that is ´reverent, absorbed´ (shooting script).¨
¨Colleoni is not a shadowy underworld figure, but a representative of the establishment. Greene emphasis his status as a rich ... businessman and the intimate relationship between organized crime and the capitalist class.¨
¨As [Pinkie] ... climbs the pier railings in terror and confusion, Boulting manages to render him as an evil but ultimately pathetic figure: a wicked child finally brought to book by the adult world for his crimes.¨
¨...in a [1948] New Year speech to the Incorporated Association of Headmasters by its Chairman, Dr. P.T. Freeman, at London´s County Hall... ... the cinema [was described] as ´one of our worst and most powerful enemies´ which contributed ´very little towards giving the youth a sense of values.´ This was a predictable view at a time when the number of adolescents being imprisoned had increased by 250 per cent since 1939...¨
¨...in London ... Brighton Rock, opening on 8 January [1948], broke all attendance records on its first two days..."
¨What disappeared [from the film adaptation of Graham Greene´s novel] was Greene´s pessimism, acceptable in the days of Hitler´s rise and the economy´s fall, but inappropriate to the project of post-war reconstruction.¨
¨if it was the ruthlessness of international capital that maintained the inequalities that bred Pinkie, and if it was philanthropy that cleared the slums and prevented a new generation of Pinkies, where is all this revealed in the film? What has become of its sociology?¨
¨Greene´s book had indicated that the children of the poor turn to violent crime as an expressive and economic release from a social situation in which they are allowed no control over their lives.¨
¨In the midst of a crime wave that threatened the order on which reconstruction depended, what was required was not understanding but condemnation. Thus, at a cultural moment when the problems of crime and punishment loomed larger that the problems of poverty and unemployment, it is hardly surprising that the Boultings´ film dispenses with Greene´s tragic anti-hero and replaces him with a villain reeking of sulfur.¨
¨As an intervention in the debate about juvenile delinquency, [the film] ¨Brighton Rock¨ was a salutary reminder of the enduring and intractable malevolence within the human spirit which the best therapeutic regimes find hard to treat.¨
¨...films are so often less about the times in which they are set than about when they are made; and ¨Brighton Rock¨ now seems to say more about post-war anxieties than pre-war conditions.¨
I had heard about the film, said to be an outstanding example of British noir, last year and when I could not find it in the library, I went ahead & actually purchased it thru Amazon, since I dislike watching films online (although no doubt it is on Youtube).
I watched the film once and couldn´t quite catch all the dialogue due to the local accents and/or slang, or understand what the ¨Kolley Kibbee¨ contest was about, so not all the elements of the plot were clear to me. Luckily, the DVD has a commentary track and optional English subtitles so I need to watch the film again with the English subtitles on and then also watch it with the commentary track. I was impressed with the film even though I don´t think I completely understood it, and so I borrowed the book which is the subject of this review from the library in hopes of finding a key to the mysteries of the movie.
The book does offer quite a bit of context, but in the end, I think I shall have to read the Greene novel to understand the nuances, the references to the novel in this book of film criticism. So the ¨Brighton Rock" project continues for me.
This is nonetheless an excellent book examining how the film came together including how the deal to produce the film came about, considerations as to censorship in both the UK and US, how the screenplay, written by Greene, stuck to or departed from the treatment of his novel by Terence Rattigan, how the movie was cast, details about the players - their background and their subsequent careers. This sort of detail of course gives a clue as to why certain players were picked to play given parts, and may suggest associations of each actor to prior parts or types not too accessible to a present-day, especially a non-British, viewer of the film, but the discussions of the casting decisions was interesting nonetheless. Richard Attenborough was the automatic choice for the lead because he had played the part of the protagonist Pinkie in the successful stage adaptation of Greene´s popular novel in London; his portrayal of Pinkie on film was the breakout role that made him a star.
Pinkie, from a seedy side of resort mecca Brighton the tourist hordes never see, during the Depression years of the 1930s, has become a minor member of a gang whose leader, Mr. Kite, an older man, an authority or father figure to Pinkie, has just been murdered because of an expose of the gang´s slots racket written by journalist Fred Hale. The leadership of the gang now falls to Pinkie, who then seeks revenge for the murder of Kite.
Young Pinkie has dead eyes and a dead soul: He has become a sociopath and his Catholic upbringing has further twisted his psyche in that it has given his paranoia about others and fear of death and loathing of sexuality a religious overlay. Rose, also a Catholic from the same slum neighborhood as Pinkie, however, remains not only good, but even deeply religious - practically saintly in thinking love can transform Pinkie. Pinkie, however, is only cynically using her - that is clear to the viewer, but she is blinded by her love of Pinkie and unable to understand that to him she is just another dupe.
By the time the film was made, a decade after the novel was written, Britain was in the midst of post-war reconstruction. There is an interesting section of the book that discusses the socio-political trends that informed the critical response to the movie in the UK which was mostly negative for a number of different reasons - but the film was nonetheless wildly popular at the British box office, in fact a smash hit, and is considered today one of the best British films ever made.
Here are some quotes from the book:
¨It is early February 1947 and Britain is in the grip of the worst winter in living memory. As demand for electricity soars, power cuts to domestic users last five hours per day and supplies to many businesses are suspended for days at a time."
¨The sense of community and social purpose nurtured during the war was melting away with the snow."
¨Fatalism in tragedy is necessarily related to a view of human nature as fixed and unchanging.¨
¨John Atkins once remarked that Greene ´tries to do for Pinkie what Milton did for Satan´. Through the character of Pinkie, Greene wanted his readers to experience the seductive power of evil evident in the boy´s relationship with Rose, a girl from the same hellish slum background who has nevertheless remained good."
¨The book is an early example of the tendency...for the noir thriller of the 1940s to be informed by popular psychoanalysis.¨
¨Like Greene, [the Boulting brothers] ... were fascinated by the contradictions of human nature, the messy complexities of reality that undermine the dogma of universal prescription; and in his novel they were shown the ´rock´ on which idealism founders.¨
¨...the social contrasts within the story´s setting: the two Brightons, the one cheek by jowl wit the other. Second, [the fragment of treatment] ... attempts to balance out the preoccupation with Pinkie by ensuring that at least one character [Rose] will have an existence independent of her relationship to him."
¨Genuine emotional melodrama was the tried-and-tested carrier of truths about good and evil."
¨For Greene, the palais de dance is a secular church where a crooner replaces the priest, singing of ´love of a kind, music of a kind, truth of a kind´ to a crowd that is ´reverent, absorbed´ (shooting script).¨
¨Colleoni is not a shadowy underworld figure, but a representative of the establishment. Greene emphasis his status as a rich ... businessman and the intimate relationship between organized crime and the capitalist class.¨
¨As [Pinkie] ... climbs the pier railings in terror and confusion, Boulting manages to render him as an evil but ultimately pathetic figure: a wicked child finally brought to book by the adult world for his crimes.¨
¨...in a [1948] New Year speech to the Incorporated Association of Headmasters by its Chairman, Dr. P.T. Freeman, at London´s County Hall... ... the cinema [was described] as ´one of our worst and most powerful enemies´ which contributed ´very little towards giving the youth a sense of values.´ This was a predictable view at a time when the number of adolescents being imprisoned had increased by 250 per cent since 1939...¨
¨...in London ... Brighton Rock, opening on 8 January [1948], broke all attendance records on its first two days..."
¨What disappeared [from the film adaptation of Graham Greene´s novel] was Greene´s pessimism, acceptable in the days of Hitler´s rise and the economy´s fall, but inappropriate to the project of post-war reconstruction.¨
¨if it was the ruthlessness of international capital that maintained the inequalities that bred Pinkie, and if it was philanthropy that cleared the slums and prevented a new generation of Pinkies, where is all this revealed in the film? What has become of its sociology?¨
¨Greene´s book had indicated that the children of the poor turn to violent crime as an expressive and economic release from a social situation in which they are allowed no control over their lives.¨
¨In the midst of a crime wave that threatened the order on which reconstruction depended, what was required was not understanding but condemnation. Thus, at a cultural moment when the problems of crime and punishment loomed larger that the problems of poverty and unemployment, it is hardly surprising that the Boultings´ film dispenses with Greene´s tragic anti-hero and replaces him with a villain reeking of sulfur.¨
¨As an intervention in the debate about juvenile delinquency, [the film] ¨Brighton Rock¨ was a salutary reminder of the enduring and intractable malevolence within the human spirit which the best therapeutic regimes find hard to treat.¨
¨...films are so often less about the times in which they are set than about when they are made; and ¨Brighton Rock¨ now seems to say more about post-war anxieties than pre-war conditions.¨
October 27, 2008
A must read for anyone serious about British film
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews