Graham Greene
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Our Man in Havana, Edge of Eternity and Streets of Fire: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Picks
Given the (justly) hallowed place that Carol Reed’s 1949 thriller The Third Man occupies in the hearts and minds of most cineastes, I’ve always been a little mystified by the comparative obscurity of his subsequent collaboration with screenwriter Graham Greene, the delightful satire Our Man in Havana (1959). I can only assume that the bleak, wintry setting of postwar Vienna that gives The Third Man its haunting effects also gives it a slight edge in the critical consciousness over Havana’s sunny, tropical effervescence. Yet in Reed and Greene’s skilled hands, the breezy charm of Havana just before the revolution only […]
by Jim Hemphill on May 17, 2017 -
ROWAN JOFFE, “BRIGHTON ROCK”
Effortlessly gorgeous and consistently engrossing, Rowan Joffe’s feature debut is an update of Brighton Rock, an adaptation of the Graham Greene crime novel first filmed in 1947 by the Boulting Brothers and starring a very young Richard Attenborough in what turned out to be a breakthrough role of sorts. The earlier film, which has developed a minor cult for its odd mixture of lurid noir stylings and depiction of pre-war British coastal life, is set in the late ’30s, with Europe’s headlong leap into war providing the backdrop for the tale of the sociopathic young gangster Pinkie Brown and the ill-fated […]
by Brandon Harris on Aug 24, 2011
