John Boulting, UK 1947
Print source: British Film Institute
Running time: 92 minutes
About the print
This print was acquired by BFI in 1956 from Associated British-Pathé. It was one of six titles the archive chose to preserve that otherwise would have been destroyed. It shows almost no scratching, with little edge and perf damage. There is some curl to the film and some splices in each reel. Shrinkage: 0.7%
About the film
“For reasons not wholly mysterious, the film the Boulting Brothers made in England in 1947 from Graham Greene’s novel, Brighton Rock, has been given the much more graphic title of Young Scarface over here. . . . The new designation is not entirely misleading or unfair, for Young Scarface, beyond peradventure, is a tough and relentless gangster film—to be sure, in an English environment and in the English idiom, but a gangster film, nonetheless. It centers about a youthful hoodlum, boss of a small-time gambling gang that operates on the fringes of Brighton, the popular seaside resort. . . . From an initial graphic murder of a reporter who has apparently done some damage to the gang, through a series of gangland liquidations, right down to the doing away with the youngster while on the point of causing the death of an innocent girl, the film is tense. This is a hard-boiled gangster picture in every sense of the word.”
– Bosley Crowther, New York Times, November 8, 1951
“The Chief Secretary, Mr. J. M. Baddeley, has forbidden the film Brighton Rock to be shown in New South Wales. A senior officer . . . declined to reveal what reasons Mr. Baddeley gave for his action. . . . The New South Wales Chief Secretary’s Department last banned a film in 1934. It was the Australian bushranger film When the Kellys Rode.”
– Sydney Morning Herald, July 10, 1948