When Brighton Rock was called ‘The Worst Sin’ – the rare original poster
As distributors were concerned that international audiences wouldn’t understand what ‘Brighton Rock’ meant, the classic British crime film was originally to be known as ‘The Worst Sin’, and this was the title on a limited original run of posters.
Looking at this poster for The Worst Sin, you might feel like you’ve seen this all before somewhere. A glowering and behatted Richard Attenborough. A busy racecourse with horses hurtling towards the finish line. A “Boulting Bros production” of a “Novel by Graham Greene”.
If all of this seems strangely familiar, then you’d be right, for ‘The Worst Sin’ is better known as Brighton Rock (1947), the celebrated British crime film.
After acquiring the rights to Greene’s hugely popular 1938 novel (and a subsequent 1943 stage adaptation by Frank Harvey), the Boulting brothers set to work on their big screen adaptation in 1946.
Cinematic depictions of hard-boiled criminality were in vogue in the immediate aftermath of World War II, with titles such as Appointment with Crime (1946) and They Made Me a Fugitive (1947) proving popular with audiences.
Consequently, Brighton Rock’s tale of Pinkie Brown (menacingly brought to life by Attenborough) and immoral gangsterism on the south coast promised much at the box office. But would international audiences understand the film’s title? This is the conundrum that the film’s distributor Pathé Pictures grappled with as they prepared for release in late 1947.
An early run of pressbooks explains that a name change was “unavoidable”, as the original title was “well-nigh untranslatable” to non-UK audiences, unfamiliar with British seaside resorts and their stripy confectionary.
Foregrounding the film’s religious subtext, the new title – The Worst Sin – was inspired by a line from the film’s script, as Pinkie’s wife Rose vehemently rejects his duplicitous suggestion that they end their lives together: “No, Pinkie. That’s the worst sin of all! That’s despair – there will be no forgiveness for that.”
However, even as Pathé went to print on an initial run of posters – such as this one, preserved in the BFI National Archive – doubts remained about whether this rebrand was the right course of action. On the posters, ‘Brighton Rock’ still features in brackets alongside the new title, indicating an acute awareness of how important audience familiarity with the original source material would be to the film’s success.
In the end, the marketing value of Greene’s work won out. By the time the film was certified by the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC) in September 1947, ‘The Worst Sin’ was no more; Brighton Rock was back. (In international markets, various other titles were used including, most notably, ‘Young Scarface’ in the United States).
It’s interesting to note, though, that while the title may have changed, the looming portrait of Pinkie was retained and enhanced on the film’s final marketing assets. This poster, therefore, offers a fascinating insight into the work of film distributors and the creative decisions that shape the tone and pitch of their promotional campaigns.
Produced with the support of the BFI Screen Heritage Fund, awarding National Lottery funding.