Brighton Rock (1948)

(On Cable TV, May 2022) I have a bit of a soft spot for Brighton as a location, having spent a few days there for a convention in 2010. But while the Brighton of Brighton Rock may sometime look the same as seen from the sea (I swear I’ve stayed at one of the hotels shown by the film), this 1940s noir incarnation is not a fun place for the characters that inhabit it. There’s a malevolent gang leader (played by a very young Richard Attenborough) taking aim at a journalist for having written about the city’s organized crime problem, and murder shapes much of the film once past its first half-hour. 1940s Brighton is portrayed with some flair, and the rough noirish nature of the plotting means there’s always something interesting going on, as the protagonist’s past actions are primed to harm him. British noir was quite a thing, and even if Brighton Rock can’t quite recapture the mounting tension of its first half-hour, it’s still not a bad watch.