Brighton Rock - Lighting and Meaning

We recently watched John Boulting's 1947 classic, Brighton Rock. A story of gang violence, one of the gangs being led by the young, cunning Pinkie Brown. He commits murder at a fair ground and does his best to cover it up, doing whatever it takes, even forcing a young, naive woman into holding evidence.

One aspect of the film we were focusing on was the use of lighting. Lighting can portray power and vulnerability, sincerity and happiness. Characters within the film had different kinds of light shone upon them, for example, Pinky, the main bad guy in the film, regularly had low key lighting. This outlined not only his importance, but his darker, far more evil side, as if he is looming in the shadows. This is very much the case when we first see Pinky, he is lounging on his bed with what seems to be a piece of string, during this scene, the other characters have a mid/bright tone portraying their "innocence". It's almost as if he's scanning his brain, the low key lighting adds to his zone of thinking.

Rose's lighting is completely opposite from Pinky's, in pretty much all of her scenes high key light is used. This technique shows she is a friendly, bright and happy person. This remains throughout the whole film until near the end, the scene where she is on the pier uses a fairly darker tone, however, still lighter light compared to Pinky. 

Hard light and soft light has also been used to strengthen the display of each individual characters within the film.