Good noir involves slick style and meaningful shots, and Brighton Rock has it all.
A Mirror Over His Shoulder
We looked at this shot much more in-depth in the Pinkie Brown Character Introduction post, but even without any other context it’s just. so. COOL.
Look how Fred’s face falls before he turns away from the sinister voice . . . but his attempt at avoidance is foiled by the mirror reflecting his antagonists!
A Friendly Conversation
This scene is a bit longer, but the funny content (“super nipples . . . I wouldn’t know more if I’d married ‘im!”) will be worth your while.
The initial exchange is simple shot-reverse-shot, which takes care to show us how the inspector is avoiding eye contact with self-appointed sleuth Ida Arnold (the inimitable Hermione Baddeley).
After he walks around the table, the rest is a oner, camera adjusting slightly as needed.
It lets us see how the inspector ‘stands over’ Ida, dismissively smoking even while we watch her expressive face find meaning in a report he ignored.
The transition to beach with singers is somewhat comical; I leave it in because those singers are echoed in the opening of the next shot (half an hour later).
A Secret In Plain Sight
The singers are a curio distracting for Rose, emphasising her joy in small things and love of beauty before the truly ugly thing about to happen.
Though there are cuts, the camera also progresses across the room in a few fluid movements to keep us in the emotion, the blocking becoming Rose looking in at Pinkie through the glass, while the sound change (0:38-0:40) explicitly tells us she can’t hear him.
Staging the Mundane
A phone call often ‘merely’ conveys information, so how do you make it interesting, especially if you intend to show the mundanity of a phone ringing and someone walking to answer it?
The scene transitions Ida's boisterous laugh turning into a phone ring before showing us the phone out-of-focus amongst beautiful framing with lines and shadows and smoke galore.
The focus follows a mobster down stairs to the phone, then when the conversation starts the cuts juxtapose mobster and innocent - him sweaty in a dingy crowded room, her in a bright white room with her waitress hat as a sort of halo.
Staging a Murder
From the camera moving around the railing to build tension to the ‘murder weapon’, to the closeup of Pinkie’s cold eyes, this death is executed with aplomb.
Remember how in the opening bar scene, the character ‘barrels’ the camera to make us feel complicit with Pinkie? They do the same again here.
Pinkie’s eyes also ‘lead’ to the cut of the bannister, and then after an agonisingly slow handshake followed by a series of quick cuts all with movement in the frame and sound in the mix — a kick, a push, a fall, a head thudding, a flame spurting, a swaying clock — before the local blind proprietor asks what’s happened.
Again a mirror plays a key role, showing us the dead body far below Pinkie while we can also look yup at him, with the broken banister over his heart . . .
or where his heart should be.