Blackboard Jungle
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Movie Reviews of Blackboard Jungle
Movie Review: Surprising
Summary: 5 Stars
Often, it's necessary to take older movies with a grain of salt in order to enjoy them. This is to say that you often need to readjust your mindset to appreciate the historical context of the film. The amazing thing about Blackboard Jungle, however, is that it holds its own even today. This film is just as entertaining and its issues just as relevent now as in 1955. Great acting, compelling story - do not miss this film.Movie Review: Good movie , Good price
Summary: 5 Stars
Really great movie. It is a classic. Delivery was prompt.I have had no problems so far with purchases from Amazon and small issues were resolved right away. As a matter of fact I feel a lot more comfortable with amazon than e-bayMovie Review: Blackboard Jungle
Summary: 5 Stars
an excellent movie with a good cast.
subject of this movie is a real today issue and was good to see that this subject was as real back then as it is today
Movie Review: satisfied customer
Summary: 5 Stars
The dvd is in great shape like the seller said...came pretty quickly, and I am satisfied,and would use this seller again.Movie Review: Rock around the clock
Summary: 4 Stars
Mix a dash of earnest social consciousness, a pinch of rock `n roll ("One, two, three o'clock, four o'clock ROCK..."), a dollop of exploitation (A shock story of today's high school hoodlums!) and you've got the recipe for BLACKBOARD JUNGLE (1955), director Richard Brooks' highly successful and award winning movie.
BLACKBOARD JUNGLE is the story of Richard Dadier (Glenn Ford), a rookie teacher newly hired at Emmanuel High School, an inner-city school that one of the veteran teachers aptly, we soon learn, refers to as a `garbage can.' Dadier - immediately and inevitably `Daddy-O' to his class full of juvenile delinquents - is an idealist of sorts who, against the stream, believes that he can reach and teach the kids. In the class is a glowering Vic Morrow and an apathetic Sidney Poitier - Poitier's character is apathetic, that is - and various other representatives of inner-city hoodlums. It's in this corrosive environment that Dadier's liberal idealism is buffeted and, finally, put to the acid test. Ford, Morrow and Poitier are outstanding in a story that seems quite dated today. Although it presents itself as an unblinking exposé of juvenile delinquency, there's an awful lot missing from this one - parents are never seen, nor students' homes nor, surprisingly, does there seem to be any female students. Perhaps, as is suggested on the commentary track, the school was originally supposed a trade school but changed when the powers that be checked what side their bread was buttered on. As it is, there's seems to be no reason given as to why these kids are so rotten, or whether anyone but Dadier really cares about them.
Still, BLACKBOARD JUNGLE is a great leap forward from Hollywood's last examination of troubled youth, namely the Dead End Kids, aka the East End Kids, aka the Bowery Boys. The kid/boys began their career in the 1930s in a number of Warner Brothers' tough guy movies - Dead End with Humphrey Bogart, Angels With Dirty Faces with Jimmy Cagney, They Made Me a Criminal with John Garfield - before des-ing and dos-ing themselves into America's heart as the Bowery Boys in a popular and prolific series of b-flicks in the 40s and 50s. If the Bowery Boys were wise cracking punks whose golden hearts were only a little obscured by the grime of the slums, director Richard Brooks's jungle denizens are outright sociopaths. Rapists and murderers, stalkers and racial bigots, urban terrorists with a blood lust for intimidation and a virulent disdain for authority.
Mazursky, Farr, Ford and Freeman tell us, on the comfortable and reminiscence filled commentary track, that Robert Taylor and Mickey Rooney (!?) were considered for the lead role. It's impossible to imagine anyone but Glenn Ford in the part. Ford ably conveys the gentle idealism and intelligence that the untested Dadier begins with. Ford also had the toughness, the ability to express contained rage that burbles to the surface after Dadier has spent a couple of semesters in the garbage can. In short, he was perfect for the part. BLACKBOARD JUNGLE may not contain Ford's best performance, but it's the best I've seen.
If the movie doesn't deliver the promised penetrating insight into juvenile delinquency, it dealt honestly with its subject and opened the topic up for a nation-wide discussion.
Besides the commentary track, the dvd also includes a trailer and a pretty weak MGM cartoon titled Blackboard Jumble and featuring Droopy. Ah, well, I guess it's nice that they included a cartoon so directly related to the feature presentation.