Rowan Joffé made a decent adaptation of Graham Greene’s 1938 novel in 2011 [see VL-3/12], but this 1947 version—scripted by Greene and Terence Rattigan, directed by John Boulting and starring Richard Attenborough in his career-making performance—remains superior. Attenborough chillingly recreates the role he played in a 1943 play on London’s West End as Pinkie Brown, a sociopathic young gangster who kills Fred Hale (Alan Wheatley), a reporter he blames for the death of his boss. Not only does he then arrange for a rival gang to kill Spicer (Wylie Watson), a crony of his who has become a liability (killing him himself when the plan miscarries), but realizing that naïve young waitress Rose Brown (Carol Marsh) might be able to implicate him in Hale’s death, he romances and marries her. Meanwhile, Ida Arnold (Hermione Baddeley), who had gotten to know Hale, undertakes to investigate his death, leading Pinkie to conclude that it is too dangerous to allow Rose to live, and he persuades her to agree to a suicide pact. Though she loves him, Rose cannot go through with it even as the police close in on them both. The screenplay makes significant changes from the book, downplaying its religious themes and cleverly altering the ending to something less bleak and more ironic—a process detailed by film historian Tim Lucas in the exemplary audio commentary that is the disc’s sole bonus feature—but most of them can be justified for cinematic reasons, like the surrealistic staging of Hale’s murder on an amusement park ride called Dante’s Inferno (a sort of horror version of a tunnel of love) and the expansion of the assault on Spicer and Pinkie at a crowded racetrack. This was only Boulting’s second film, but he demonstrates an almost Hitchcockian feel for suspense, securing not only splendid performances down the line but superb work from cinematographer Harry Waxman (shooting on location, which adds texture to the sequence of Hale being pursued down Brighton’s byways and the finale on the dark boardwalk) and editor Peter Graham Scott, who never allows the tension to flag. Usually, cinematic adaptations of fine books are disappointments, especially to their readers, but this is one of the rare exceptions to the rule—a film every bit as good as the novel on which it is based. Though the print has not been treated to a full restoration, the transfer is excellent. Highly recommended. (F. Swietek)