Film Forum

(1947) On a sunny Whitsun bank holiday at the slightly tacky seaside resort of Brighton (the title refers to a local hard candy), people are dancing to the bands on the pier, and the shooting galleries, souvenir stands and tea rooms are packed with day-trippers. But “Kolly Kibber,” busy catching newspaper giveaway cards around town, keeps looking over his shoulder for Richard Attenborough’s mystical psycho “Pinkie,” razor-wielding teenage head of a racecourse gang (“one of the most vicious pieces of work to ever slink across a cinema screen – Total Film), so ruthless he’d actually (yecch!) marry naïve, underage waitress Carol Marsh just to tie up a crime’s loose end. But blowsy blonde Hermione Baddeley keeps asking all these questions. The Boulting Brothers’ (John alternated with identical twin Roy as director and producer) adaptation of Graham Green’s serious thriller was scripted by the author himself, after he was dissatisfied with Terence Rattigan’s first, happily-ended draft. Breakthrough starring screen role for future Oscar-winning director (Gandhi) Attenborough, who had played the same role on stage four years earlier – plus dazzling location shooting, with crowds of seemingly unseeing holiday-goers in the background of chase scenes across major intersections; but also with the blackest of Noir treatments for this darkest of British Noirs. 35mm. Approx. 86 mins.

Reviews

 “The best [film to capture] on celluloid [Greene’s] seedy world of evil, sin and betrayal. The casting is impeccable – the most authentic criminal band ever assembled in a British movie.”
– Phillip French, The Observer

“An unlikely mix of social realism and metaphysical speculation is synthesized into something peculiarly powerful and vaguely prophetic. Time has transformed it into a paean to a kind of melancholy Englishness. [Pre-dating] American icons of juvenile delinquency (Brando, Dean, and so on), Pinkie is the slick-haired [teddy boy] with a razor blade, Alex in A Clockwork Orange, skinhead, suedehead, casual, any kind of well-dressed hooligan. I remember when Johnny Rotten first appeared, full of anemic fury; with the shock of recognition we knew who this sickly youth was. He was Pinkie. Pinkie’s image, however, still hovers like the ghost at the feast, the negative image. He is, of course, the Pop Idol from Hell.”
– Jake Arnott, The Guardian

“One of the finest British thrillers ever.”
– Time Out (London)

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