Original subtitles

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

(DOG BARKS)

Made in 1947 and directed by John Boulting,

Brighton Rock remains one of the true exemplars

of a very British flavour of film noir.

It is a gripping tale of gangsters, murder, and cover-up.

A truly bleak report on the human condition

and hardly an advert for the sunny charms of this seaside town.

(DRAMATIC ORCHESTRAL MUSIC)

(SEABIRDS CRY)

Well, it was certainly one of the most violent British films

I've ever seen.

One of the darkest British films

I think I've ever seen.

I think it was an example

that Britain actually can do film noir

as well as the Americans.

Not as often, but occasionally.

And this one caused an awful lot of trouble.

The Daily Mirror said that nobody should go and see it,

and the New South Wales in Australia

banned it entirely.

(PENSIVE ORCHESTRAL MUSIC)

It was a film about a truly unprecedented performance.

The rapacious, cold-eyed hood, Pinkie Brown,

and the lengths to which he's willing to go,

offered a truly compelling and modern study

of the nature of evil.

DALLOW: Pinkie, stick your minces on that.

(SUSPENSEFUL ORCHESTRAL MUSIC)

REPORTER: 'Every weekend, those people who can afford the money

'and spare the time, escape from the great built-up area of London.

'By train and coach, by car and bicycle,

'they make their way to the green of the countryside

'and the tang of the sea.

'The worries of the week's work fade into the freedom of the air,

'if only for a couple of days.'

(SEABIRDS CRY)

It's a good place for a murder, Brighton's Palace Pier in 1935.

Amongst the jostling crowds

who have flocked in from London to take in the sea air,

people are enjoying all the simple pleasures the resort has to offer.

The shows, the amusement arcades, the gaudy attractions.

The irony is wicked.

Reporter Fred Hale knows he's in trouble.

His newspaper article has exposed a local gang,

and now they are coming for him.

(WOMAN IN BAR LAUGHS)

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

DALLOW: Hello, Fred.

I said hello, Fred.

We've been looking for you for a long time, Fred.

I'm not Fred. That don't make any difference.

One of Britain's most celebrated novelists,

Graham Greene's best known story was published in 1938,

though set three years before.

Brighton Rock mixed the thrills

of what he would classify as an entertainment

with a familiar examination of sin and morality,

themes fuelled by the Catholic faith he had adopted in 1926.

Few novels capture the anxiety of British life like this.

On one level, it is a crime thriller.

Below that, it is an exploration of morality.

It is also, in a funny sort of way, a very perverse love story.

All of these things are brought together

in an extraordinary way by Greene

and he wraps them up in something that is also a social document.

You get a feeling of the time, it's absolutely amazing,

of 1935, between the wars,

of what Brighton in particular,

but also Britain was like.

Graham Greene is not only one of Britain's finest novelists,

he's also one of its most successful contributors to cinema.

There've been over 42 screenplays written based on his novels.

He was a number of things all at once.

He was a journalist, he was a reviewer, he was a novelist,

he was a screenwriter, and he was also a spy.

All of these different facets all combined

to make him one of the finest storytellers

that you will find in the English language.

He has an ability to understand

different worlds, different characters

but also, the pace of his plotting is absolutely phenomenal.

In the summer of 1936, he was working for

a very fashionable but short-lived magazine called Night And Day,

where he was the literary editor.

At the same time, he was writing novels.

He had produced a thriller entitled A Gun For Sale, about a hitman,

and he had his eye on the news.

And a particular story was filling the British newspapers

in the summer of 1936.

And this was an extraordinary gang outrage

at the racetrack in Lewes, in Sussex, not far from Brighton,

and 30 men descended on two bookies.

So when Graham Greene wrote his book Brighton Rock,

he modelled the gangster on Darby Sabini and his gang

who came down from Clerkenwell in London,

primarily for the racetrack

because they were involved in protection of bookmakers,

particularly at racetracks.

The whole great problem with bookmakers at racetracks,

was involved in legislation

and which prohibited betting away from racecourses.

So what happened at the racecourses, close to the action, was crucial,

and they could make £4,000 or so

from a race meeting at Brighton.

£4,000... well over £200,000 in today's money.

A lot of money involved.

And the gangs would come down from London

and they would "protect", if you like,

the bookmakers on their pitches.

(URGENT ORCHESTRAL MUSIC)

Reporter Fred Hale, played with clammy desperation by Alan Wheatley.

He is tracked from the train station to the seafront,

swerving between the banks of day trippers,

leaping on buses, trying to stay alive.

So there you are, Fred.WOMAN: You said you hadn't got a friend.

That's the trouble, you can't believe Fred.

(SHE LAUGHS NERVOUSLY)

This is my friend Molly. Hello.

Pleased to meet you. Come on, Fred, what about that appointment?

No, I'm not coming.

I don't know him. My name's not Fred.

Now, take it easy, Fred.

We're all going for a walk, see?

What I think the Boultings capture so vividly,

certainly in the first half of Brighton Rock,

is the kind of chaotic nature of the seaside resort.

That these people have come from London...Mm.

..and they've come to spend money, they've come to have a good time,

and they're lax.

They've kind of had too much to drink and eat

and they're open to all the local criminality

who might want to prey on them. Oh, yes.

And I think, especially the opening sequence,

there's something of the fairground about it.

You hear the shrill nature of the rides.

Yeah, yeah. Everything feels just a bit too much.

What you don't get a sense of is

the actual residents of Brighton, do you?No.

You don't really know what they think about all this,

but you do understand

that the place is not quite as it should be.Yeah.

'Brighton Rock was hardly an advert for this seaside resort'.

The council only granted the production leeway

to shoot on location on the promise of a disclaimer

that declared the crime wave was a thing of the past.

MAN: The sensation of the century! Come along! Come along!

I think I wanna pop back, deary. But you said you wouldn't leave me!

Only for a minute. I left my hanky on the seat. That's all, dear.

You can have mine.But that hasn't got sentimental associations.

Now look here, dear. You get two tickets and I'll be back.

Make 'em return! (SHE LAUGHS)

The opening sequence of Brighton Rock is, if anything,

even more riveting than the opening chapter

of Graham Greene's original novel.

Then, the screenwriter in question was Graham Greene.

Director John Boulting's editing is like a racing heartbeat.

Events could almost be in real time,

as we follow Hale's attempts to escape his inevitable fate,

the gang finally cornering their terrified quarry on the pier,

despite thousands of oblivious witnesses.

MAN: Right, come along! Roll up! Walk this way! Come along, please.

Come along, please! Only six seconds of horror!

Come on! Have a basinful of Dante's Inferno!

Only a tenner a time! Children half price!

The sensation of the century! Come along! Come along!

(EVIL LAUGHTER)

John and Roy Boulting, better known as the Boulting brothers,

deserve to be placed alongside the likes of

David Lean and Carol Reed.

Both had made documentaries during World War II,

Roy for the army film unit, John for the RAF.

Richard Attenborough had appeared

in John's portrait of a bomber crew, Journey Together.

The Boulting brothers were socially minded filmmakers,

keen to imbue their films with a message.

John and Roy Boulting were a producer-director pair of brothers.

One would produce, one would direct.

It was never entirely clear which would do which.

It was a very amorphous pairing. Basically, they would both do both.

They started out, before the Second World War,

very politically motivated. John went to Spain

and fought in the International Brigades against fascism.

And when they joined the military,

John went into the RAF filmmaking unit,

and Roy went into the army filmmaking unit,

and they were making very anti-Nazi films,

some of which were too extreme, even for the British military.

So, they explored a particular kind of social realism.

They wanted to tell real stories,

true stories, in an almost documentary style.

And certainly the films that they were making

during the Second World War were like that.

John Boulting came across Richard Attenborough, for instance,

when he was making a film about a bomber,

really following a bomber's night out over Europe.

And Richard Attenborough was the star of that,

but it was half documentary, half drama.

So, during the Second World War, they forged a particular approach

to filmmaking, which was to show the real life of real people.

When they came out of the Second World War,

they set up a film company together, intending to tell

that kind of story, to achieve a kind of social realism.

But at the same time, tell thrilling stories,

stories of political corruption, stories of crime,

and show the underbelly of Britain, if you like.

(PEOPLE SCREAM)

(HE YELLS)

(MANIACAL CACKLING)

MAN: Only a tenner a go! Children half price!

The kiddies love it! Come along! Come along!(GIRL SOBS)

Roll up! Roll up!

Come along! Come along! Dante's Inferno! This way!

Roll up, this way! Walk up, walk up, walk up!

John Boulting, the director,

he brings a really interesting style to the film,

which you could call British noir.

Cos on the one hand, it's very realistic.

It's almost documentary-like... Yes.

..in its coverage of Brighton and holidaymakers.

At the same time, it's very stylised.

It's an exceptional film.

And when I first saw it, I was quite shocked by it...

and I didn't realise how good it was,

until years later, I saw it again.

I've seen it three times, I think, now.

Each time it's got better and better.

I really think it's an outstanding film.

I think a lot of critics did at the time.

Yeah.They thought it was exciting and good,

but there was a lot of opposition to it.

They thought, "Ooh, we can't be as violent as the Americans," you know?

Do you think Graham Greene has something cinematic in his writing?

Oh, I think so.

I mean, I don't think he always likes what's done with his films.

And he didn't like the ending of this one,

but he's very cinematic in his writing.

I think Terence Rattigan helped a lot too.

'The Boulting brothers first turned

'to fashionable playwright, Terence Rattigan

'to adapt the bestselling novel'.

They knew they would have to tread carefully with the British censor,

with what was a dark, violent story,

where the villain was the protagonist,

and featuring one of the bleakest endings ever put in print.

But Rattigan's racier tone and happy ending felt contrived,

so they returned to the source, Greene himself,

to rewrite the script.

Greene would daringly keep to the spirit of his own novel.

Sharply dressed gangsters wielding coshes and razors,

the seething undercurrent of sin and guilt,

and the cruel manipulation of a waitress

by the pathological Pinkie.

Greene wrote most of the script,

although it's not exactly credited to him.

I've reviewed the correspondence,

it's quite clear that the final version of the script

was largely Graham Greene's own work.

So, that film is a collaborative effort.

It's a very strong film, with the young Richard Attenborough

really excelling as Pinkie.

And, of course, the atmosphere being very stark, very noir...

and again, a sort of quiet masterpiece came of it.

Well, the extraordinary thing about the Boulting brothers is that

one thinks of them as social realist filmmakers

who made social realist comedies or satires.

And so, it's rather sobering to be reminded of the fact

that they made Brighton Rock, which is certainly not a comedy.

In fact, Brighton Rock might be considered to be

the first and greatest of British film noir.

Certainly, it has never been superseded,

and its influence is still being felt decades later.

They were experienced, they had already established themselves

as proper filmmakers with a social conscience.

They were very, very keen to make films

that had some almost documentary meaning to them.

They were interested in society. They were interested in

actually exposing the ills of society,

as well as looking at the different classes.

They had a certain commitment, a social commitment,

and this was both of them together.

They were an extraordinary double act.

It's a film that's very sharp tongued

and difficult to comprehend, really...Yes, yeah.

..as a crime feature.

And it brought a lot of other films, you know,

which we now know. Get Carter and stuff like that,

which definitely were probably influenced by Brighton Rock.

Yeah, the whole British gangster genre.

Come on lady, try your skill. Don't be afraid, don't be bashful.

Got the time on you, Bill? You can see the clock, can't you?

I don't stand for phony alibis, see?

That's alright, Bill, I only wanted to know.

Quarter past one.

(GUNSHOTS)

The intimidation that was imposed by these gangs

was really serious.

People would be absolutely frightened to report

what had happened to the police.

And to some extent, they were justified

because very often the courts would allow

prisoners who got charged to be out on bail.

When they were out on bail, there was intimidation

and bribery that was going to undermine

the criminal justice system.

And very often, the punishments,

when people were convicted, were only relatively minor.

So this was going on, whilst on the seafront

the families were coming down from London

for very brief periods of escape

from the slum conditions they were in,

looking to just have a few moments on the beach with their picnic.

So you've got these very contrasting worlds.

Brighton had long since stopped being a fashionable resort

where you saw the wealthy go

to entertain themselves, as it had been when it first started out.

This was kind of a seedy town. It was the town where you'd go

and you knew that the hotel clerk wouldn't ask if you were married.

You could sign in as Mr and Mrs Smith and have a dirty weekend away.

It was well known for this. This was a running joke,

that Brighton would be where you went to have your affair.

So it was a very seedy, and yet, ostensibly attractive,

regency seaside resort.

So Graham Greene, and indeed the film,

play on these three versions of Brighton.

The very stylish Hotel Cosmopolitan in the film.

The fun-loving families on the beach.

And behind the scenes, in the alleyways

and on the racecourses, the gangsters and the thugs,

who are up to all sorts of mischief.

Brown? Brown?

The inspector wants a word round at the station. Right, come along.

Next time tell him to send a sergeant for me.

Perhaps he'll come himself next time, old man.Very funny.

Brighton had its own police force, Brighton Borough Police Force.

It had its own chief constable

and probably about 200 officers, something like that.

Very much concerned with looking after their local problems

and probably, the police force,

rather too comfortable and cosy with some of the businesses.

In 1953, not long after the end of the Second World War,

the chief constable was prosecuted for corruption,

with a couple of his senior officers.

And corruption, in a sense, spread to some parts

of the Brighton Police from the racecourse

or from elements from London and criminal elements elsewhere.

It rather lost its reputation and certainly had a seedy side,

which I think Graham Greene latched onto

when he was writing Brighton Rock.

Here, take your ruddy prize and hop it. What do you want, chocolates?

I don't eat chocolates. Cigarettes?Don't smoke.

Here, give me the doll, the one with the yellow hair.

Reminds me of church, Bill.

MAN: There was no need to do it, Pinkie, no need at all.

What made you do it?

You put a rope around our necks, that's what you've done.

Poor devil, he didn't stand a chance.

Wasn't necessary.

I can't swallow this muck. Let me have a drink, Pinkie.

Not today. Go on, eat.

I'll be as sick a dog. Oh, be sick, then.

Are the cards alright, Dallow? We gave the cards to Spicer.

Did you put 'em out alright? Course I put 'em out.

I don't see why you're so worried about the cards.

You don't see much, do ya?

They're an alibi, aren't they?

They prove he kept to his programme and died after two.

(SEABIRDS CRY)

In the '30s, Brighton was an exotic, raffish place,

at least on the surface.

As the film progresses, the resort is revealed

as a dank, unlikable place.

A labyrinth of backstreets and run-down boarding houses,

including the one the gang use as a base.

The film is shot with a mix of documentary realism

and dramatic lighting and framing

that epitomised film noir.

Brighton gets smaller and smaller

as Pinkie becomes entrapped in his desperate plans.

Brighton started off as the place where

the future King George IV built Brighton Pavilion.

That's about 1787.

The racecourse was built around about the same time.

It was a very desirable place to go, and a resort.

But gradually, perhaps through the Victorian times,

when a lot more people came there,

it rather lost its reputation.

I think this sort of period

up to the Second World War and afterwards,

was a period when, let's say in America,

Al Capone was operating in Chicago.

There was a feeling that gangsters and protection

was perhaps a natural order of things.

The police were sort of demoralised, underpaid, understaffed.

A lot of problems arising from the war in one way or another.

A lot of firearms left over from people bringing guns back

from their wartime service, and a lot of violence.

So I think communities were generally unsettled

and the legislation to do with prevention of crime

wasn't as it is today.

What's fascinating about the way Brighton Rock is actually filmed

is that it uses several different kinds of techniques.

Filmed on location, first of all, filmed in Brighton.

The opening sequence is a chase.

Boulting actually placed cameras, hidden cameras,

all over the route that he was going to take.

So, all the people who are milling around are real people.

They're real tourists. They didn't know they were being filmed.

This gives it an incredible sense of almost semi-documentary feel,

it's cinema verite.

But later on,

and certainly as the film moves in more closely

and more insular into the actual gang,

the house, the rooming house that they're in

is something that could've been out of David Lean's Oliver Twist.

It could be Fagin's den, actually.

It is so expressionist.

A rotting, ghastly place.

And all the men in it, not just the gang,

but also the guy who lives below them,

who is blind, as it happens,

seem to be part of another world.

Another era, almost.

Which table was it, Spicer?

Right of the door, the one with the flowers.What flowers?

How do I know what flowers? Yellow flowers.

Pinkie, don't go.

Brighton Rock is two stories.

It's the story of the gangsters and their world,

but it's also the story of sort of an anti-love affair

between Rose, a very innocent, naive waitress

and Pinkie, the gangster.

Rose is perhaps a witness.

She's not aware that she's a witness.

She's seen something which could, if it came to it,

show that the gang had murdered a newspaper reporter.

And so Pinkie decides that he's going to

find out what she knows and try to persuade her

that it's too dangerous for her to talk to the police,

to talk to anyone about a particular event on a day where

a gang member came to her restaurant and left a card on the table.

You'll never guess what I found here only 10 minutes ago.

One of Kolley Kibber's cards worth 10 shillings.

The other girls said I was a fool not to challenge him.

Why didn't you? I never thought!

It wasn't a bit like his photograph.

Maybe the card had been there all morning.

Oh, no. I'd just changed the cloth before he come in

cos the other customer upset his coffee.

Maybe you just didn't look at him close.

Oh, I always look at you close. Customer, I mean.

You see, I'm... I'm new and I get a bit scared.

I wouldn't want to do anything to offend.

Like standing here talking while you want a cup of tea.

Well, that's alright, don't go away. I like a girl who's friendly.

In every sense of the word,

Pinkie required a sensational performance.

Attenborough had actually played the role before

in the 1943 stage production at London's Garrick Theatre.

However, the Boultings claimed it was his 1942 film debut

as the callow deserter from In Which We Serve

that convinced them he was right for the part.

And it does prove that Richard Attenborough is

a very good actor, given the right parts.

He was often given sort of noble parts

or playing, latterly, Father Christmas all the time.

Yeah. But this one, my goodness.

He's extremely good as this vicious little gangster in Brighton.

And it's so startling, if you think the film is 1947,

to have a lead character as that...

kind of evil, almost. Yes, yes.

You don't root for the lead man. He's the killer in the story.

No. I mean, it's better than...

anything James Cagney did, in that way.

He really was evil, wasn't he?

Sit down.

Look, I, uh...

I like you, Rose,

and I wanna warn you, see?

This fella, Fred Hale, got mixed up in things.What things?

Don't matter what things.

Look, you forget all about the fellow who left the card.

He's dead. You've got the money.

Alright. Anything you say.

You can call me Pinkie if you like.

That's what my friends call me.

(THUNDER CRACKS)

Pinkie.

Pinkie is very young. He's in his late teens.

He's an unlikely leader for this group.

The leader of the gang, Kite, has been betrayed.

And so leadership has fallen,

almost by default

to the fiercest and most intelligent of the followers in this small gang.

But he's facing very long odds

against much more powerful gang leaders,

not least among them Colleoni, the man who was modelled on Sabini.

Very, very few writers had ever managed to achieve

the sheer glacial, psychopathic character

that Pinkie emerged as.

And certainly, very few actors had actually ever done it before,

because Richard Attenborough's Pinkie Brown is

one of the landmarks of cinematic villainy.

It is an extraordinary performance, however you look at it.

He is supposedly

a man of Catholic faith.

He is supposedly psychotic,

and yet none of this is obvious.

It's all embedded in the way he looks, behaves,

and above all, talks.

There's something unknowable about Pinkie

and there's even less knowable about him

in the film than there is in the book.

Pinkie was his greatest challenge.

Attenborough was 24, but convinces you he was 17.

He threw himself into the part,

training with his beloved Chelsea Football Club to lose weight,

learning to limit his facial expressions.

But he's not inhuman. He's desperate to survive.

Greene loved his performance.

How the actor suggests so much more than we ever learn.

This is a performance before method acting

has really taken off in Hollywood,

and when cinema acting was coming from the stage.

And cinema acting was quite big at that point.

There was quite large gestures on screen.

Richard Attenborough brings this stillness,

this absolute rigid stillness to Pinkie.

Everything is taking place behind the eyes.

The most he'll do is play with a piece of string,

making a cat's cradle.

His stillness is terrifying, and his silence is terrifying.

So when people turn to him and he says nothing,

that's when you're most scared of him.

So the presence that Richard Attenborough brings to this,

it's a new form of acting, I think, at that point.

I mean, in a way, he's the first method actor.

He's someone who manages to internalise the conflicts of Pinkie,

play Pinkie with his heart and soul,

without needing a theoretical process to get there.

He just knows how to do it. And this is

an amazing piece of cinematic performance.

And I think that Attenborough, as you say,

he's often seen as a cuddly, kind of "luvvie" character.

Maybe he cultivated that in his later career.

But that first half of his career, he was very good at

darker characters, cowardly characters.Yeah.

The difficult roles, as it were. None more so than Pinkie.

No, he's an excellent actor,

and when he made his films,

he got very good acting from everybody.

But Pinkie is a...

well, I don't know, it's a crime story

which gets absolutely into the place in which it's set.

Brighton. Brighton, of course. Yes.

Holiday making, lovely place.

But underneath there is a horrible,

gang-ridden subculture... Yeah.

..which nobody really knows about.

'This is a Brighton of shifting moods.

The seaside haven never feels comfortable.'

It's too hot, too crowded, or caught in a downpour.

The rides on the pier are shrill and unsettling.

The local singers off-key.

The sense of food and drink sickening.

This is the uneasy atmosphere of Greene-land.

Even when Pinkie parlays with rival mobster Colleoni

in the classy Cosmopolitan Hotel,

the confusion and bustle are ever-present.

You think my mob's too small for you?

I employ a great many people.

GREENE: Graham Greene feared that the film wouldn't be any good.

But when the film was finally complete and he saw it,

he felt that the directing and the producing had been very good.

The film work was very good, the camera work,

and finally, that Richard Attenborough

had really captured the essence of Pinkie.

You know an awful lot of things, don't you?I like to.

(THUNDER CRACKS)

Come on, let's go inside out of this rain and hear some real music.

(LAID-BACK JAZZ MUSIC PLAYS)

It's lovely here.

You're soft enough, aren't you?

How old are you? Seventeen.

So am I.

You ever been in love? Oh, yes.

You would've. You're green.

You don't know what it's all about.

I've watched it. I know love.

You're a Catholic? Yes.

Brighton Rock established Graham Greene

as a vital force in British filmmaking,

both as a source of stories and as a screenwriter.

Can any writer boast three screenplays

in three successive years

as good as Brighton Rock, The Fallen Idol, and The Third Man?

Indeed, they form an unofficial trilogy,

sharing themes of guilt, morality, loyalty, and betrayal.

He has more swagger and eloquence,

but there are definite shades of Pinkie in the amoral games

of Harry Lime in The Third Man.

You are never quite sure what kind of story it is you're following.

At the beginning, it's a murder story.Yeah.

Then it's a kind of cover-up story about gangs.

Then it becomes a sort of anti-love story.

This kind of relationship between Pinkie and Rose,

Carol Marsh and Richard Attenborough's characters,

becomes the dominant thread. Yeah.

While the outside of the story, you have Hermione Baddeley as Ida,

who is almost like an amateur sleuth,

like a Miss Marple kind of character. Yes.

The blowsy, musical star or semi-star,

who's determined to find out exactly what Pinkie is about.

But Pinkie's very interesting cos,

though he's undoubtedly an evil psychopath,

he knows he is. Mm.

He sort of wants redemption in a funny sort of way.

That's very Catholic. Yes.

* But you know, that's very Graham Greene, isn't it?

Yeah. That even though 95% of him

is awful... Yeah.

..there's 5% of him who knows it

and is trying to somehow redeem himself.

Yeah. He never manages it, of course.

Didn't you get my message?

It's my half day. I was coming to find you, Pinkie.

What message?Well, I phoned you at Frank's and told him to tell you.

Told who?Sounded like the man who left the card.

He's dead, you read it in the paper, didn't you? Dead.

It doesn't matter. What matters is someone was in asking questions.

A bogey?A woman. What did she want?

What the man who left the card looked like.Well?

I didn't tell her a thing.

She is an incredibly naive, very beautiful,

very wide-eyed, very impressionable young girl

who hasn't had a boyfriend, who is bullied at work, really.

She finds her workmates are always having a go at her.

It's very early in her career. She really is very naive

and very new to the world.

She is a Catholic. She's very, very driven by her faith.

She believes wholeheartedly.

And when she meets Pinkie, who takes her off to the pier

and talks to her, very clearly telling her

in effect that he has sinned,

but, she discovers, he is also a Catholic.

Initially, you wonder whether her faith will, you know,

be sufficient to keep his secret.

But in fact, the fact that he talks about

how he believes in Catholicism,

"These atheists know nothing," he says,

and talks about hellfire and damnation.

She knows that he's a believer,

and that begins to propel her towards him.

Now, perhaps conventionally in a gangster film,

what this would lead to is the redemption of the gangster.

He finds a truly good woman.

Someone who is prepared to lie for him, cover up for him,

who is prepared to sacrifice her innocence to keep him safe,

but Pinkie cannot love her.

In fact, the more she gives to him, the more he hates her.

And so you watch him descend into this almost repulsion

for the woman he's going to eventually ask to marry him,

because a wife can't give evidence against her husband.

Graham Greene began writing Brighton Rock as a pure thriller.

After about 50 pages, he discovered that

the great issue in the book is

sin, redemption and the mercy of God.

Because Young Pinkie, who is the villain, or the hero,

the anti-hero of the book, is a broken-up Catholic.

He was brought up a Catholic and he believes in hell,

has very little hope of heaven.

Maintains a slight sense that a deathbed repentance is possible

"between the stirrup and the ground," a line that's repeated.

An old proverb that if you fall off a horse,

there can be repentance between the stirrup and the ground.

The phrase is spoken at the end by a priest.

"You do not know my child, nor anyone,

"the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God".

Both Graham Greene and the Boulting brothers were

sort of collaborating on something. Bringing together

various senses and feelings that they had accumulated

in the course of the war,

and they were the perfect partnership for this.

They were sort of all putting it into this melting pot,

in a crucible, so that it would come out as Brighton Rock.

In Greene's case, he'd been in the Secret Service,

he'd seen the evil that men can do.

He'd had probably his own personal experiences

that gave him a fairly dark view of humanity.

Greene was always struggling with his sense of faith.

He became a Catholic in 1925,

and although he didn't like to be thought of as a Catholic writer,

he thought himself as a writer who happened to be a Catholic.

Nonetheless, Brighton Rock is certainly the first of his books

that actually dealt seriously with a crisis of faith

and certainly in a very, very complex way.

And to actually put that into a film

so that it was popular entertainment,

and he thought of Brighton Rock as popular entertainment,

is absolutely extraordinary.

Of course, the Boultings were exactly the right people to do it

because during the war, they had been documenting.

They had worked on films

that actually showed various aspects of war.

They knew evil. Even before the war,

one of their first films, Pastor Hall, was an anti-Nazi movie,

so they had that sort of conscience.

Who is Pinkie?

Is he a delinquent borne of urban depravity?

Is he a killer by his very nature?

Is it written through him like those sticks of rock?

As Ida says, "Bite one all the way down,

"you'll still read 'Brighton'. That's human nature".

The concept of damnation hangs over the film.

Pinkie is only certain of hell.

"Don't you believe in heaven?" implores Rose.

"Maybe", he says, as if it's unimportant.

The bigger question that Greene asks is

how could a creature as heartless as Pinkie exist within God's mercy?

I think that Richard Attenborough

has never done better than Pinkie.

Yes. And it was a risk for him, I think.

And astonishing, I think, if you think just across the whole film.

And I like to think that in a way, if you think of even forward to

something like Psycho and Anthony Perkins

and the kind of roles that came afterwards.Yeah.

You think, well, it sort of began with Pinkie,

that idea of a kind of examination of psychopathology

and that kind of character. Different ways, but...

Dirk Bogarde in The Blue Lamp. Yes.

They were all... It was kind of a style of character that emerged.

Yeah. And I think it begins with Pinkie.

Yes, I think so.

I think Pinkie is really...

..really a landmark in British filmmaking.

I believe it is. At the time it wasn't thought to be.

But I think it is, really. Yeah, definitely.

I wonder what it was like watching it...

..in places like Brighton. That's an interesting question.

What must it have been like in Brighton at the time

to watch the movie? Yeah.

After all, Brief Encounter was roaring with laughter,

sailors roaring with laughter at the English accents and everything.

I doubt if the Brighton audience was roaring with laughter.

No, not at all.Think they must've been rather shocked.

Is anything wrong, Pinkie?

Everything.

Let's go on the pier.

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