The gangster movie genre tends to be thought of in the vein of the renaissance it experienced in the 1970s and on and off through to the 90s. That was the era when Francis Ford Coppola made it prestige and when Martin Scorsese made it grounded. But the gangster movie existed from the earliest days of Hollywood and had a particular heyday in the 1930s and 40s: The Public Enemy, Little Caesar, White Heat, the original Scarface. But these were largely sensational in nature, interested in shocking the audience with crime more than exploring the subject and the characters. But at least one gangster movie from this era seems to pre-empt the later forms the genre would take, and for a genre so deeply American it is perhaps a mite insulting that it came from across the pond.
Brighton Rock was based on a novel by Graham Greene, who adapted it himself with fellow acclaimed playwright Terence Rattigan, about a low-level British gangster whose violence catches up to him as he reckons with the conflict between his amoral code and his strict Catholic upbringing (themes that would of course be conjunction favourites of Scorsese decades later). It was directed and produced by the Boulting Brothers, John and Roy, and starred in his breakthrough movie role after an early career on the stage Richard Attenborough -a cuddly old man in later years who plays very well the demented young sociopath Pinkie Brown. Pinkie has at the start recently inherited his gang from its murdered former leader, and targets the journalist whose racketeering exposé they blame for the death. Pinkie succeeds in performing the hit, but soon finds himself embroiled in a relationship with innocent waitress Rose (Carol Marsh), to cover his tracks, and the subject of an investigation into the death by a shrewd amateur detective Ida Arnold (Hermione Baddeley).
Shot contemporaneously and on real locations, there’s a grit to be found in Brighton Rock absent from many of its American cousins. Brighton with its open streets, inviting beaches and promenade, is so distinct a setting, so disorienting for the kind of violence and underhandedness of its characters and their world. Yet the Boulting Brothers take full advantage of the environment, its piers and touristy festivities. They imbue the waters with a deadliness -two characters meet their ends there and so casually. There’s a claustrophobia cast on the place too, the small and shabby proximity of everything felt as Pinkie becomes more desperate and dangerous -especially when he is cornered and knifed across the face by a bigger rival gang.
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Pinkie’s gang really is a small outfit and Pinkie himself in way over his head. He is also, in spite of his contemptuous personality, conflicted somewhat religiously -berating atheists and yet deeply aware of his own sins. Attenborough plays him extraordinarily as somebody constantly on guard, not just for enemies but for God, and who though tough and confident, is critically immature and does not really know what he’s doing. Much as he delegates, he is responsible for his own messes. His Catholicism haunts him, both internally, and externally in the form of Rose. Rose he romances ostensibly because if she were to marry him she couldn’t testify against him with the evidence she has. But he also clearly does so as some distant hope of salvation for his soul, even though he despises her otherwise. A nasty and remorseless man, but with compelling motivations and insecurities that Attenborough embodies terrifically and the filmmakers appropriately illustrate. So many of the stark high-contrast close-ups of Pinkie highlight his fear and the darkness enveloping him.
Rose’s naïvety does more for this than anything else in the movie -he is challenged by her unwavering faith in a way that others would brush aside. And she may be one of the first in a line of gangster wives who sequester themselves in that faith as penance for their husband’s actions -as she comes to learn exactly what he does. Marsh is very good in a part that could be one-note but for the conviction she brings to it. In Pinkie’s gang it is of course a delight also to see one William Hartnell, two decades before he became the first Doctor Who, as Pinkie’s loyal but principled second man Dallow. Having heard that voice so often in assurance and inquisitiveness, it is remarkable how easily it can be made to sound hostile. Other members of the gang include Wylie Watson as the poor scapegoat Spicer and Nigel Stock as the upstart Cubitt. Veteran British stage actor Harcourt Williams is great as the corrupt mob lawyer quoting Shakespeare. But the singular delight of the movie, both in terms of comic relief and moral investment to contrast Pinkie, is Baddeley who has never been more formidable. Ida Arnold is such a bright spot of this movie and Baddeley plays her with such fierce confidence, I regret that there was never a series about this amateur detective solving murders and inspiring fear in gangster’s hearts.
She makes the movie fun while Pinkie makes it intriguing. It feels ahead of its time, partly for its slightly more liberal use of violence and profanity than was allowed in Hollywood at the time, partly because it flows so well and is directed with an artfulness that sometimes borders on expressionistic. I certainly felt some moments hearken back to Fritz Lang’s M. The ending is changed to spare some feeling, which Greene hated, but works well for the format. You can see the seeds of what the gangster genre would evolve into far more here than in many of its contemporaries; a thrilling and fascinating noir.
Criterion Recommendation: Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
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It’ll never happen. Studio Ghibli’s grip on the movie will probably always be ironclad. And yet, Pixar eventually relented. If any Ghibli movie deserves that kind of one-off inclusion in the Criterion Collection, it is Grave of the Fireflies, the most moving war film ever made. It is famously heartbreaking and yet just as famously profoundly beautiful -the story of two children Seita and Setsuko, who lose first their home then their mother to bombings during World War II, finding themselves struggling to survive on their own in the tough economic cross-hairs of war. At every turn they are hammered down upon by expectations and their dire situation, Seita’s pride and confidence and hope shaken to the core. A devastating movie like no other on loss of innocence, it contains moments of pure beauty that cannot be replicated for their emotional worth. The tiny beats of joy these two children are able to share in amidst cascading misery and death are a reminder that even if forgotten their lives mattered, their humanity mattered. It’s an especially potent lesson to take away right now, as we risk becoming numb to a torrent of dead children in war zones. There would be no better time for Ghibli and Criterion to reach common ground.
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