I thought Richard Widmark’s Tommy Udo in “Kiss of Death” (Henry Hathaway, 1947) was the ultimate evil character of film noir, but Richard Attenborough’s Pinkie Brown surpasses him, in my humble opinion.
Nancy Marsh as the innocent Rose, Hermione Baddeley as the concerned Ida Arnold and William Hartnell as Dallow, the criminal of dubious morals balance Attenborough’s performance.
Great story, cinematography and dialogue complete a 4.7 star film. I even love the ending, which differs a bit from Graham Greene’s book.
Fun fact #1. According to the Kino Lorber Blu Ray commentary track by film historian Tim Lucas, Greene conceived the character of Ida Arnold as a person that meddles in other people’s affairs and makes things worse, a commentary on US interventionism. But in the film, she comes across as a concerned mother figure. Regardless, Hermione does a brilliant job, and provides a much-needed comic relief at times.
Fun fact #2. Camera operator Gilbert Taylor went on to be the DP for “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” (Stanley Kubrick, 1964), “A Hard Day’s Night” (Richard Lester, 1964), “Star Wars” (George Lucas, 1977), and many other films.
I recently read Graham Greene’s novel; Attenborough is perfect as Pinkie Brown. Also stunning photography.
In John Boulting’s adaptation of Graham Greene’s Catholic-imbued crime novel, Brighton Rock, the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity find form in the naive Rose (Nancy Marsh), the soft-spoken seventeen-year-old who falls in love with the violent, selfish, undeserving Pinkie Brown (Richard Attenborough) and stands by patiently as he humiliates her and plots her death. Possessing the volatile temperament of a James Cagney character, a switchblade his weapon of choice, Pinkie heads a gang of racketeers in the resort town of Brighton, their ostensible headquarters a dilapidated tenement building where more action takes place in the stairwell (drama heightened by plenty of high camera angles) than inside the drab apartments. Hermione Baddeley plays Ida Arnold, a tough, over-the-hill pub singer who suspects Pinkie of murdering a man she’d met at the fairgrounds who showed up dead just hours later, and William Hartnell plays Dallow, a gangster with a heart. The film’s pacing never lets up, aided by May’s often dramatic score that accelerates action, particularly chase scenes, with intensifying rhythm, and Boulting composes scenes using both the bustling Brighton settings and the cold, gray interiors for maximum dramatic effect: note the innovative haunted house ride sequence or the fall over a banister which results in the victim’s body gorgeously reflected in a ceiling mirror.
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