Classic Movies: The Story of Brighton Rock on Sky Arts

 

This film was released in 1947 and was set between the wars in 1935. Brighton Rock was filmed in startling black and white, contrasting with presenter Ian Nathan caught on camera in brilliant colour moving about the same locations. A movie about gangsters and the cover up of a murder". He starts in The Lanes, (so familiar to me having been five years at college there from 1963) and on to Palace Pier where a great deal was filmed. "A good place for a murder". 

Nathan talks to Derek Malcolm who tells us that this is "one of the darkest" films that "caused a lot of trouble" when it opened. It was banned in Australia and the Daily Mirror told everyone to avoid it. Ian Nathan says it's about "the nature of evil" and what Britain was like between the wars. We hear a lot about Graham Greene who wrote the novel and who ended up adapting it for the screenplay. This is credited to Terrence Rattigan but Greene took over even though he doesn't have a credit. He wrote the story after hearing on the news about a gang from London making a fortune at the Brighton Racetrack. 

Then about the brothers, John and Roy Boulting, the brothers who were the director and producers. After hearing about their background, it is revealed that they met Richard Attenborough white telling documentary type stories during WW2. (In fact the film has a partly documentary type feel with all the crowd scenes in the resort). Dickie was 24 when he played the 17 year old Pinkie Brown but looked the part of the young psychopathic gang leader. A study in evil and violence. Neil Norman says it is "the first and greatest British film noir" and one of the "landmarks of cinema villainy". Derek Malcolm said "each time seeing it gets better and better". 

After that early documentary style, later on we get to the seedy boarding house contrasting with the plush hotel. The film made Brighton so unappealing, too crowded, too hot, too much crime,  that the opening credits had to point out it was made to look that way. Graham Greene was very pleased with the result and thought everything worked so well. His trilogy of screenplays, Brighton Rock, The Fallen Idol and The Third Man all came, amazingly, in just three years.  

I saw the 2011 film that Roland Joffe planted in 1964, and the play at Watford Palace Theatre in 2018. They were both fine but not a patch on the original.