Tag Archives: graham greene

Noirvember: Brighton Rock (1948)

Posted on by

brighton rock

Watch enough British cinema and you will eventually come across the name Graham Greene. He was a novelist whose books were often adapted for the screen. Eventually, he became a screenwriter himself. His films include The Third Man (1949), This Gun For Hire (1942), Went the Day Well? (1942), Ministry of Fear (1944), and many others. I’ve seen quite a few of them and there isn’t a bad one in the bunch.

This includes Brighton Rock, a terrific little film noir about a group of hoodlums in the titular seaside English town. Richard Attenborough stars as Pinkie the razor-wielding, sadistic leader of a small gang of hoods. He happens across Fred (Alan Wheatley) a man he thinks is responsible for the death of the gang’s former leader.

He and the rest of the gang members (including the first Doctor Who, William Hartnell) chase Fred through a carnival until finally killing him on one of those creaky horror rides.

While trying to hide at the carnival Fred meets Ina (Hermione Baddeley), for having a woman by his side might work as a disguise. She winds up playing detective as no one else seems to care what happened to him.

Looking for an alibi Pinkie latches onto Rose (Carol Marsh) whom he comes across working as a waitress in a restaurant. She’s lonely and never had a guy before and falls in love immediately. He treats her terribly but says enough sweet things to keep her by his side (when he needs her to be).

It is an extraordinary performance from Richard Attenborough. I’ll always think of him as John Hammond in Jurassic Park (1993). He’s young here, and terrifying. He’s icy cold and the way he manipulates Rose is just awful (awfully good).

This is film noir all the way through with terrifically stark black-and-white photography, pitch-black characters, and wonderfully made from start to finish.

Great British Cinema: Went the Day Well? (1942)

Posted on by

went the day well

George Orwell once stated that All Art Is Propaganda, and after watching Went the Day Well? I wanna ask, is that such a bad thing?

My tongue is planted firmly in my cheek, and to be fair, I’ve never even read that Orwell book, but Went the Day Well? is a piece of wartime propaganda. And it is excellent.

The thought experiment goes – what if the Nazis successfully took over a British town? What if they invaded England? The answer the film proposes is that we’d have to fight back. Sometimes brutally.

In the small village of Bramley Inn a group of what appear to be British soldiers arrive unannounced. They state that they are there to judge the village’s preparedness and ask to be quartered there for a few days.

At first, the villagers believe them and are excited to see some real action (or as real as they think they’ll ever get). The village has done its preparations, they have a Homeguard and have practiced what to do if the war comes to them.

But soon they begin to think these soldiers may not be what they say they are. One of them slips up in their English and another writes his “7s” in the European way. Just as they are trying to decide what to do, the soldiers reveal themselves as Germans setting up the invasion.

The Nazis are ruthless. They mow down the Homeguard without a second’s thought and have no problems shooting anyone else who causes trouble.

The message is clear: the villagers have to be just as tough. In an amazing scene – and I’m sorry for the spoilers on an 80-year-old film – a sweet little old lady is serving dinner to one of the Nazis. She prattles on as she cooks, revealing a surprisingly intimate detail about her life – that she and her husband couldn’t have children and they both blamed the other one. Then, when the Nazi isn’t looking she tosses pepper into his eyes, grabs an axe, and gives him a whack.

It is a surprisingly violent film for a 1942 film, but the message is clear again. The enemy will not hesitate to kill you and the British way of life, and you must be willing to fight back with all you’ve got. Even if you live in a little village that will likely never see any sort of action, you must be prepared.

As a piece of propaganda, it is quite effective. But better yet as a piece of cinema, it is excellent all around.