Brighton Rock (1948)

Brighton Rock (1948) is a classic limey gangland early youth violence exploitation and murder film noir, and a classic of the style, a classic of British cinema, a classic of the cinema of Graham Greene, and a ground-breaking and block-rocking belter of its day, offering some of the purest cinema of the post-war British age.

And this in a classic Graham Greene pre-war tale, a combination of multiple efforts of genius to create a quite uniquely British noir experience.

One will be warned that entire books have been written about the film of Brighton Rock (1948) and even about Richard Attenborough’s ran-sackingly riveting portrayal of Pinkie Brown. 

Eight O'Clock Walk (1954)

Eight O'Clock Walk (1954) is an anti-capital punishment limey-noir in which an innocent bourgeois is catapulted into the justice system after circumstantially being held to be the murderer of a small girl.

Directed by Lance Comfort and starring Richard Attenborough, Cathy O'Donnell, Derek Farr and Maurice Denham, Eight O'Clock Walk (1954) is a fairly solid example of how the British adapted common film noir themes to their own place, time and circumstances, with a taste of the post-war era and British theatrics in an extended look into the legal procedures of a murder trial than is usual in a film of this type.

Based on a true story, Eight O'Clock Walk is an anti-capital punishment film — the title refers to the hour at which executions were traditionally carried out — that highlights the danger of circumstantial evidence resulting in the death of a mistakenly accused prisoner.