Brighton Rock (John Boulting, 1948)

[Haggai]

I saw this for the first time last night on Turner Classic Movies, which was also showing it for the first time. I had known it by reputation for a long time. It took me a while to get into it, but it's pretty great overall. Maybe I was just expecting something slightly different at first.

The influence on other crime films that came afterward is pretty apparent, with one I noticed right away. The great murder sequence on the carnival ride is reprised in similar form at the beginning of another noirish Brit crime film from 8 years later, Cast a Dark Shadow, where Dirk Bogarde is on an ominous funhouse ride with his older paramour (nothing actually happens, in that case, but the tone set is very similar). And perhaps Hitchcock got some ideas from Brighton Rock for his carnival murder sequence in Strangers on a Train.

I had always heard that Attenborough's character in this was a real bastard, but wow, I didn't know the half of it! I was pretty stunned when he does the recording for the girl and explicitly calls her a "slut," since they almost certainly couldn't have used that word at the time if it had been made in Hollywood. Also, related to that, regarding the ending...

Spoiler

Is it really all that "compromised," even if the British censors imposed it? Whoever wrote the IMDB trivia entry suggests that the last shot of the crucifix is meant to suggest Pinky's salvation, but it came across to me as much more cynical than that. The scratched record leaves her thinking that he really loved her and (by implication) that he was "saved" in some way, but the audience still knows very well that he hated her and was trying to kill her! For her naivete to persist like that seems like an even more scathing ending to me than one in which she hears the full recording, which the IMDB entry claims was the original way it was supposed to end.

[kidc85]

Spoiler

Yeah, completely in agreement with you over the ending. The girl will spend the rest of her life worshipping a bastard who never loved her. That's really, really fucked up, I think it's far more horrible than Greene's intended outcome.

[geoffcowgill]

As far as the ending varying from the book, and which one is more devastating, it's worth noting that Greene wrote the screenplay too, so the 'sanitized' ending of the movie might have been the author's way of having his cake and eating it too through the very ambiguity you've discussed. At any rate, it's a very good film and one of the best of the countless adaptations of Greene's work. If only Ida Arnold (Hermione Baddeley) didn't look like she was wearing a clown suit.

By the way, IMDB has a movie in development with this title for 2010. Anyone know if it is a remake?

[dadaistnun]

Variety article with a little info on the remake/new adaptation here.

“Brighton Rock” is being written and will be directed by Rowan Joffe, who co-wrote “28 Weeks Later” and “Last Resort.” Joffe is updating the story from the 1930s to the 1960s, to give it a more modern feel. The project will be steered by Paul Webster (“Atonement”).

Some time ago (a couple of years after The Thin Red Line, but before The New World was announced, iirc) there was talk about Malick producing an adaptation, though this obviously never came to fruition.

[Awesome Welles]

I heard about this a while back. While Will Clarke seems to be doing a great job on acquisitions though I am not holding my breath on the slate they have planned.

Optimum's CEO Will Clarke has spent several months combing through the French major's vast library for titles to remake as British movies...They have now put their first three projects into development - the Graham Greene classic Brighton Rock, French thriller Le Choc and last year;s National Theater stage hit Rafta Rafta.

How about going through that library for films that need to be released on DVD?

[colinr0380]

The BBC did a programme on British censorship back in 1995 called Empire of the Censors. Here's transcript of the section on Brighton Rock:

Roy Boulting: Brighton Rock was a big thing for us as filmmakers. It was a departure from anything we had done before, in terms of some of its content. When the film was finished there were some very violent scenes. It was understated violence, you didn't see the actual thing taking place, but you knew that it was taking place...anyhow it seemed to work.

Richard E. Grant: Originally the film, like the novel, ended with Pinky dead, his sole legacy to Rose the poisonous recording. It was too amoral for the censors at the time (Joseph Brooke-Wilkinson who was BBFC Secretary from 1913-1948).

Roy Boulting: Mr Brooke-Wilkinson was, as ever, dissatisfied. I telephoned Graham and said "Look this is the situation: this bloody old fool wants us to reshoot the ending, but you have a reputation. Will you come along to meet him in order to defend your work?" Graham did and gave them a very lucid explanation of what was intended but that old boy, as if it were the last battle, the last rampart he would man, just gruffly said "No. No. Got to change it".

It had to be done in one day and the lighting was quite distinct and different from the rest of the film. It was a compromise, and I would have much preferred the original ending, but it was a neat idea to use the disc [skipping].

Brooke-Wilkinson was forced to resign in the scandal over passing No Orchids For Miss Blandish.

Interesingly the documentary also goes into Roy Boulting's own film as director Pastor Hall which, after the screenplay was sent to the censors before filming started, was denounced as anti-Nazi propaganda that could derail Neville Chamberlain's attempts at appeasement, and therefore would never be made. Of course when Britain went to war the film was immediately produced in the hopes it would be effective propaganda to export to the US!