Brighton Rock (1948)

Film: Brighton Rock (1948)

Stars: Richard Attenborough, Hermione Baddeley, William Hartnell, Carol Marsh

Director: John Boulting

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Throughout the month of June, in honor of the 10th Anniversary of The Many Rantings of John, we will be doing a Film Noir Movie Marathon, featuring fifteen film noir classics that I'll be seeing for the first time.  Reviews of other film noir classics are at the bottom of this article.

As you might imagine, I watch a lot of movies.  Even when I've been in a bit of a rut, film-wise (we talked about that a bit a few weeks ago, but suffice it to say 2022 has not been my friend in terms of getting the same kinds of cinematic viewing heights I reached in 2020 & 2021), I still watch 2-3 films a week, which is well more than the average person.  With that, I frequently run into situations where a movie is average, but has at least one element that makes it feel extraordinary as a result.  That is surely the case with 1948's Brighton Rock, one of the only British noirs we'll profile for our series this month (British noirs tended to be less violent but a bit more pathological in their depictions of the crime world in my experience).  The movie houses what would become a legendary performance from Richard Attenborough (who would later gain fame to a different generation of moviegoers for his Oscar-winning directing of Gandhi and for welcoming us all to Jurassic Park), which is where it gains its fame, but I was curious if it would rise beyond that.  I found that while Attenborough lives up to the hype, the rest of the movie suffers from not reaching his caliber.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie focuses on the British crime scene in Brighton between the two wars, where Pinkie Brown (Attenborough), a sadistic teenager, is trying to take on a more established gang operation through sheer terror.  He does this largely through revenge, initially killing a journalist whose reporting Pinkie blames for the death of one of his associates, and then trying to cover his tracks after sloppily killing the journalist, whose friend Ida (Baddeley) is working to uncover the journalist's killer.  Pinkie is romanced by a sweet waitress named Rose (Marsh), who sees an imaginary good in Pinkie, and because she saw the journalist before his death, he marries her to ensure she can't testify against him (even though she's clearly in love with him).  As the film progresses, Pinkie kills repeatedly but watches as his gang disintegrates, with both the rival gang and Ida closing in on him.  During a scene where he tries to trick Rose into killing herself (more in a second), he doesn't succeed, and instead falls to his own death...though in the process Rose clings to the idea that Pinkie truly loved her in his death.

The movie's power comes from Attenborough's ruthless, cruel performance, which he'd originated in the play version of this movie on the West End.  The nastiest moments in the film come about 2/3 of the way through, shortly after his wedding to Carol.  Carol wants a gramophone recording of Pinkie saying he loves her, even though she doesn't have a record player, and while in the booth he confesses that he "hates her" and calls her a "little slut."  It's as nasty as you can imagine, and a testament to how Attenborough refuses to water down his character.  Pinkie is fully-fleshed, but he's also a demonic man, even by crime standards, and deserves what's coming to him.  The twist is that after Pinkie scratches the record, and after he unsuccessfully doesn't pull off a double-suicide pact with Rose (which he has no intention of fulfilling-he just wants her out of the way), the record only plays him saying "I love you," so Rose spends the rest of her life not understanding the nasty man that is her husband.

This is great filmmaking & writing (and acting from Attenborough), but the rest of the movie can't live up to it.  Marsh is too wide-eyed to be believable, and all of the assorted hoods are interchangeable, and the first half hour of the movie is needlessly complicated.  Baddeley isn't bad (she never is), but the future Oscar nominee doesn't give us much to go by with Ida...why is she devoting so much of her life to finding the killer of a man she barely knows?  And why doesn't Pinkie just kill her too (it'd solve a lot of his problems)?  The movie doesn't have a great answer to these questions, and gets lost along the way.  But if you like good acting, Attenborough's worth the price of admission here so I'm going with a very soft 3-stars.

Previous Films in the Series: Murder My Sweet, The Woman in the Window, Scarlet Street, The Killers, The Big Sleep, Daisy Kenyon, Nightmare Alley, Ride the Pink Horse, The Woman on the Beach, Night and the City, They Live By Night, Gun Crazy, In a Lonely Place, Sweet Smell of Success, The Big Heat, Pickup on South Street, The Killing, The Long Goodbye, Body Heat