Brighton Rock (1948)

Brighton Rock (John Boulting, 1948) Brighton is a seaside resort town on England's southern coast, a holiday spot for the working class, and the subject of Graham Greene's "Brighton Rock," a story of the dark side that can infest a tourist attraction, where money can be loosened in many ways and in great amounts, which would attract the criminal element in the same amounts that they attract the punters.

When a film was made of Graham Greene's novel, the resort was, understandably, nervous, preventing the film-makers from shooting at the local racetracks, and to use hidden cameras during the crowd scenes on location. Oh. And there was enough of a nervousness that a calming opening card is used:

"Brighton today is a large, jolly, friendly seaside town in Sussex, exactly one hour's journey from London. But in the years between the two wars, behind the Regency terraces and crowded beaches, there was another Brighton of dark alleyways and festering slums. From here, the poison of crime and violence and gang warfare began to spread, until the challenge was taken up by the Police. This is a story of that other Brighton - now happily no more."

Quite happily. The film takes place in 1935—Greene had written a previous book "A Gun For Sale" and the events of that one are a bit of prologue for Brighton Rock, involving the death of the gangster Kite after a newspaper article has exposed the corruption involving slots and race-tracks and the resulting turf wars that have blighted Brighton. Kite's gang is now run by by a 17 year old tough and psychopath named "Pinkie" Brown (played by a 24 year old Richard Attenborough, with the deadest eyes in the world). And the film begins with a bit of news about a contest with lots of potential winners. They never gave any thought to anybody losing.

The Daily Messenger newspaper arrives at the boarding house populated by the Kite gang with news of a promotional contest; "Kolley Kibber" is coming to Brighton. A promotional stunt, a representative from the paper comes to town distributing cards to various businesses that lucky patrons can turn in for cash rewards...and the first person who finds the person posing as "Kolley Kibber" and says "You are Kolley Kibber and I claim the Daily Messenger prize" you win a bigger more desirable prize. So who does the messenger send out to be "Kolley Kibber?" Reporter Fred Hale (Alan Wheatley), the one who broke the story on the Kite gang. I suppose, at least, they didn't also fasten a target to his back, but, really, that's like sending Salman Rushdie on a book-tour to Iran.

But, it's an opportunity for the Kite Gang, now under Pinkie's control, to take revenge. After all, as one of the mob says "Pinkie loved Kite and Kite trusted Fred. And if Fred hadn'ta written that paragraph about slot machines Kite would've been alive now." Pinkie is informed of the contest and it's his intention to kill the reporter.

It isn't long before Hale arrives in Brighton, before he realizes he's being hunted. Trying to blend in with the seaside visitors, he runs into a theater performer Ida Arnold (Hermione Baddeley) and when he ends up dead, she informs the local constabulary that the reporter's death is more than suspicious, but when they rule that the man died of an apparent heart attack, she begins her own amateur sleuthing.

It becomes a cat-and-mouse game as Ida busy-bodies her way into the investigation, while Pinkie tries to cover his tracks, using one of the gang to distribute the cards to confuse the police. But, one of the cards is left at a restaurant where a waitress (Carol Marsh) can identify who left it. Pinkie chats up the girl, asking her out, but when he finds out she can identify the accomplice, he starts a plan to kill the man. And, if anybody gets suspicious, he'll marry the waitress to keep her from testifying against him in court. 

It's an odd combination of an Agatha Christie-like amateur against the most vicious of sociopaths—Miss Marple against Hannibal Lecter—and the Boulting Brothers production team construct it in the manner of a Hitchcock-like stylist, contrasting the most innocent of local color and injecting pure menace into it. Greene was the most Catholic of writers, adept at creating angels and devils, and in Pinkie, he created a terrifying monster with savage intent and no remorse, a wolf among sheep (and a teenager!). Although the film ends with a note of deluded sanctity—Greene has a wonderful phrase "You or I cannot fathom the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God"—even Greene didn't believe in it, only providing a note of hope to get past Britain's supervisory boards.

"You asked me to make a record of me voice. Well, here it is. What you want me to say is 'I love you.'
Here's the truth. I hate you, you little slut. You make me sick."

And Attenborough creates a memorable villain, contained and malicious without a thread of decency, making one think that the sympathetic, cherubic characters he'd play for the rest of his life may have been some form of atonement.