The New Black of British Post-War Cinema
It's a strange feeling watching a movie where you could leave the cinema and after a short walk visit some of the film's more noticeable locations. As was the case at the Brighton Film Festival (www.cine-city.co.uk) last December where a screening of the iconic gangster drama Brighton Rock was taking place with the odd whisper, "Wow, I actually use that train station," that would soon turn into respectful silence. Released in 1947 the John Boulting film starred a hollow-eyed Richard Attenborough as the razor-wielding thug Pinkie Brown and, like the Tarantino and Scorcese films of today, it got the press slathering about its violent content. Some were even surprised that the Brighton council had allowed such filth to be filmed on its fair streets. Granted the film does begin with the a caption stating it was set between the world wars, and supposedly Brighton - and the rest of Britain - was now a more optimistic and unified place having driven evil from its shores. But the film would come to mark the beginning of a dark new wave of British cinema traditionally mired in grand period pieces while the exception, Alfred Hitchcock, had already migrated to Hollywood where, as we all know, the money is. A new voice was needed for a nation that had survived war but was permanently scarred by its destructive nature.
Two of Greene's novels that he most successfully translated into screenplays and best define British post-war cinema are Brighton Rock and The Third Man. Working with Terence Rattigan on the screenplay of Brighton Rock and Alexander Korda for The Third Man, Greene was to bring his own particular brand of anti-hero to life and expertly capture the mood of a liberated Europe.
Published in 1938 Brighton Rock is a culmination of author Graham Greene's experiences of living an almost classic English upbringing, starting with boarding school, then Oxford University, before various jobs on newspapers and book reviews. From then on he would begin a seemingly endless world tour to global trouble spots, starting with Catholic persecution in Mexico and then working for the British Secret Service in Sierra Leone during WWII. Almost a literary equivalent of 'Our Man In., Greene would later quote that being a spy was like having "the greatest travel agent in the world". He certainly took advantage, spreading like a British Imperialist to soak up as much as he could of a culture before recreating it and stamping it with his own voice.
Greene seems to have a knack for giving a location a leading role, a feat he would pull off more famously in 1949's The Third Man when he brought to life a torn and fractured Vienna with his legendary screenplay. Closer to home the thoroughly British writer opted for the seaside town of Brighton , though much of his own experience came from seedy Nottingham . While the audience can pick out the sights in the film's opening cross-city chase (the Pavilion, the Lanes and, inevitably, the pier), it soon becomes apparent that beneath the sunny exterior of a place famed for deck chairs and suggestive postcards there was a dark underbelly of callous thuggery, perpetrated by juvenile delinquents fighting for control of the jolly tourist spot. It's a common enough tale in today's cinema, but Greene brings it close to home. It's all very well Humphrey Bogart discovering greed and corruption in some distant, depressed metropolis, but with Brighton Rock chances are you've been holidaying there while all this activity was happening right under your nose. Not only does it tap into the thrilling power of the violence carried out, but we're given a complex study of the anti-hero's downfall, like Henry Hill's rise and fall in Goodfellas and the corruption of power in Scarface. In fact when Brighton Rock was exported to the States a few years after its UK release it was renamed Young Scarface, and would have a lasting effect on screen villainy on both sides of the shore.
His books already seemed written for the screen and it wasn't long before Greene began preparation for his first screenplay in collaboration with director Carol Reed. Greene not being one for any particular flair or experimental narrative always seemed more interested in telling a good story, committing to an exploration of a character's very essence rather than flowery simile. Having written the seed of The Third Man on the back of an envelope with the cryptic sentence "I had paid my last farewell to Harry a week ago, when his coffin was lowered into the frozen February ground, so that it was with incredulity that I saw him pass by, without a sign of recognition, among the host of strangers in the Strand". Greene quickly made his way to Vienna , the war-torn Austrian city that would be the location/star in an ambitious UK production, and that would define a Europe still licking it's wounds.
In the few weeks that Greene had to fully drink in Vienna he had no trouble in digesting what was then a flotsam of post-war wreckage, a city splintered into several international factions. His German helped but he had the good fortune that his hotel happened to be the base of operations for MI6, giving him plenty of contacts to guide him through the lay of the land. His integration into the culture is most apparent in one scene in The Third Man where the bumbling hero Holly Martins (Joseph Cotton) is on the trail for clues about the death of his friend, the elusive Harry Lime (Orson Welles), and is badgered by an elderly native about her mistreatment of her house when it is ransacked by the army. Her Austrian is never translated but her proclamations ask whether such things would happen in America , the land of the free. To placate her Martins offers her cigarettes, more than one seeing as rationing was in full effect with women getting half the tobacco allowances of men and none for those over 50.
Where Brighton was a playful façade housing a dark, criminal underworld, Vienna had already been mauled and laid bare so Greene had to dig deeper into the once grand city renowned for Freud, Strauss and its philosophising bars and cafes. Brighton Rock ends in the shadows beneath the famed pier but for The Third Man Greene had to sift through the rubble and cast his characters into the sewers, the very bowls of the city, of any city. Like the unconscious mind they house the wild, dirty side of life; all the shit we keep out of sight yet nowhere can survive without them. It's in these depths that the villainous Lime, who's mutilating penicillin racket has made him a fugitive, is cast into and it's in that hell he is trapped and unable to escape.
It was during boarding school that Greene learned how brutal life was. He was constantly bullied for being the son of the headmaster and this torrid period of life would mark him his work for the rest of his career. He converted to Catholicism in 1926 after marrying his first wife Vivien Dayrell-Browning, although he was never that committed, it seemed to him that because he had witnessed such hell then surely there must be a heaven to hope for. It would be in both Brighton Rock and The Third Man where he would explore the concept of salvation most vividly. Boutling's ending of Brighton Rock would cause some controversy, altered from the downbeat one of the book where Pinkie's innocent wife Rose was on her way to listen to a recording of his voice which would say: "You said you wanted to know how I feel; well, here it is. What you want me to say is 'I love you'. The truth is I hate you, you little slut..." This is changed so that following Pinkie's demise on the pier Rose listens to the record which gets stuck repeating the phrase "I love you.I love you." and the camera ends with a shot of a cross suggesting possible salvation for the otherwise doomed Pinkie. This ending is in fact rather bleaker for poor Rose who has been deceived and will continue life not having learned from her experience, which she believes has been totally honest. In a sense evil has won, the deception that Pinkie perpetrated has been a success.
This sombre mood also greets the viewer as The Third Man draws to a close. Again it seems that justice has been done in a policing sense, but as we watch Anna (we're never sure about her anyway, did she know about Lime?) slowly walk away from the funeral, towards a waiting Martins and then straight past him without a word, we realise that the hero, having saved the day, is left with nothing, in fact less than nothing. He arrived in Vienna with a job offer from a friend and an optimistic future ahead of him but it all evaporated. Aesthetically Greene conceded Reed pulled off the final shot magnificently, tantalising the audience with a typical get-the-girl ending but then snatching it away.
Both films live up to the typically downbeat view of the world that Britain still has and one that is evident in its films today. What Greene also began was the careful dissection of good and evil. In a world recovering from a horrific war it was one struggling to find the meaning behind it.
Pinkie Brown's too self-involved to be able to take much control over what goes on around him and when he does it's with violence, not thinking more than two steps ahead. He is fatherless, possibly from the war, so surrounds himself with older men, who, at the same time, he must rebel against and control. His fragile masculinity crying out for respect on his meagre turf while sexual repression is his ultimate downfall. Lime on the other hand seems in another league of villainy, above the pettiness of Pinkie's an eye for an eye back stabbing, and he's cold, calculating but worst of all charismatic. He lords himself over mere mortals and those struggling to carve out an existence, a trait almost literally played out atop the Ferris wheel with the flamboyant Welles ensuring his 15 minutes of screen time is played to the hilt.
The character Lime was in part based on is the enigmatic British agent Kim Philby, who played a key role in Vienna by smuggling out wanted socialists during 1938, and even married his Austrian girlfriend to ensure she would have safe passage to the UK . It was this dashing personality that would draw Greene to befriend Philby and allow the writer to explore the boundaries of evil and ultimately betrayal. Where Pinkie was an obvious criminal, complete with deadpan delivery and short temper punctuated with a quick slash of a razor, Lime would be much more dangerous simply because he was more likeable. A trait personified by Martins who would spend the movie coming to terms with Lime's inhuman crimes. As a drunk, failed writer looking for a break from his old friend, Martins would learn a harsh lesson in trust.
In the end the dejected Holly Martins is the betrayed Greene, fearful of anyone he meets, not wanting to get too close and at the same time the state of a post-war world. Having warded off an identifiable evil the victors were left to rebuild, but the age of espionage and spies was upon us, so the main question was who could you trust, could you ever really know anyone? Ironically it would come to pass that even the saintly Philby would later defect to the Soviet Union, the third man of the Cambridge Spy Ring to do so.
The Third Man, along with Brighton Rock, heralded a new age of British filmmaking. Produced by Hungarian Alexander Korda it's a departure from his more refined period pieces such as The Private Life of Henry VIII or The Scarlet Pimpernel, that as an outsider he thought summed up the British tradition of history. It proved UK cinema could be a daring, modern and chilling reflection of the world, plus an institution that would never really regain this sort of edge for a long time, but would influence all sorts of genres in the years to come. From the serial killer voyeurism that the hypnotic Brighton Rock brought to the screen, to the idea of the super villain perpetrated by the shadowy Harry Lime. If it were made 20 years later the Ferris wheel would also have been an airship.
What Greene gave cinema with these two films was an early dalliance with evil personified and audiences found them captivating. After all it wasn't Holly Martins who was chosen to star in a radio play after the film's success, it was the devilish Harry Lime who got his own series. To a degree it was when bad guys started to have more fun and, despite punishment, through that journey viewers are allowed to let their morals go. Just look at the success of someone as cruel and sadistic as Hannibal Lecter to see that people are always after something from the wild side and it was this duality Greene would come to accept lay in us all. To enable you to see all the good in the world, the love and beauty, you occasionally have to walk with the devil.
Rich Badley
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