Blackboard Jungle
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Movie Reviews of Blackboard Jungle
Movie Review: A cultural milestone, still packs some punch
Summary: 4 Stars
Today's schools can be a lot scarier than the one Glenn Ford steps into, but this movie's message - teachers can have an impact - remains true.
That was the message writer-director Richard Brooks developed when he adapted the best-selling novel by Evan Hunter a/k/a Ed McBain. Growing up poor in Philadelphia, Brooks had been to tough schools and understood how one teacher could change a life. According to the new book "Tough as Nails: The Life and Films of Richard Brooks" (available from amazon.com), that happened to Brooks. He never forgot the teacher who taught him how to read and thus opened a new world for him.
Funny thing was, none of MGM's big contract stars wanted to be in the lead role. Among those turning it down were Robert Taylor and Mickey Rooney. Glenn Ford's career, though, was in a downturn at the time and asked for the part. And he helped make the movie one of the most memorable looks at teen life in the 1950's.
The depiction of juvenile delinquency in "Blackboard Jungle" sparked huge controversy, too, and some communities sought to ban the movie because they feared it would lead to violence. Some even called it communist-inspired because it didn't portray schools in a positive light.
"Blackboard Jungle" is remembered for many things. It was the first movie to feature a rock and roll song, "Rock Around the Clock," which Brooks personally chose for the soundtrack. (It wasn't until the movie came out that the song hit No. 1.) "Blackboard Jungle" was a huge hit, MGM's top earner that year, and on a shoestring budget to boot. It helped make a star out of Sidney Poitier, one of the kids in the classroom. And it helped Brooks gain more control over his films.
Keep an eye on the classroom and look for future writer-director Paul Mazursky, future "Combat!" star Vic Morrow (he won the part over Steve McQueen) and future "MASH" TV star Jamie Farr.
Tough as Nails: The Life and Films of Richard Brooks (Wisconsin Film Studies)
Movie Review: Those "Rock around the clock" times!
Summary: 4 Stars
This film announced from another angle the enormous no satisfaction social disseminated in several social spheres. This generation who was born just at the beggining of the WW2 expressed with the characteristic rage the rules. This behavior has been an eternal ritornello. The ingenuity innocent , the continue defy to the Status Quo has prevailed always, but specially in those hopeless and confused ages when the radical changes in the whole world even drew new expectations and questions: the rock was an important mass phenomena and somehow allowed to overthrow a good portion of cumulate tensions. In the other side of the Atlantic Ocean the New Wave was born with similar proposals.
The familiar conflicts, the huge number of orphans, the alcoholism , the obvious fear to the ghost of the nuclear weapons, the presence of the Cold War needed some answers but most of the adults ignored them , which it meant a major social effervescence.
Blackboard jungle works out as a frenetic emblem of the miscarried youth, orphan of love and spiritual guides.
Vic Morrow and Sidney Poitier were particularly effective. Glenn Ford's tour de force acting lead this movie with special credibility.
By these destiny's ironies , ten years after Poitier would be just in the other side of the classroom in "To sir with love".
Movie Review: Bleak, Noir, style with still important social comment
Summary: 4 Stars
on the problem of junvenile violence in our public schools. This is the 1950's version of the problem in a decaying urban setting, far from the safe neighborhoods & suburbs Americans were flocking to at the time. The presentation is reminiscent of the live TV dramas of the day: cheap & with minimal production values relying on the talents of the actors. And excellent acting it is. Glenn Ford is Richard Didier, at first glance, a milquetoast English teacher. His mettle is quickly tested by angry, violent, young punks posing as his students. He rises to the challenge, including a vicious physical attack, to win them over with his refusal to quit & his courage. The picture is to some extent, incomplete, providing little context in which "this garbage" as one teacher discribes the students was produced. Vic Morrow is remarkable as the unrepentant, particlarly menacing student/criminal. Sidney Poiter plays an alienated, cynical student with a class & dignity that becomes his trademark in future films. This movie, dated though it is, has been the subject in many college level course through the years. The musical bookends, "Rock Around the Clock", of this movie may have also signaled a new era in movies & music. An enduring American classic.Movie Review: Review of Blackboard Jungle DVD
Summary: 4 Stars
Blackboard Jungle I saw this movie in the theatre when I was in high school, and of course, was impressed with the opening rendition of "Rock Around The Clock" by Bill Haley and His Comets. It's a classic representation of the 1950s adult view of "Juvenile Delinquents," or incorrigible high school students in an Eastern (New York), mixed ethnic neighborhood, where an all-boy school is taught by teachers who try to reach these boys who seemingly "don't want to learn." Glenn Ford is the "new teacher on the block" who is at first "shocked" at the behavior of these "hoodlums," but becomes determined to try and reach them somehow. Sidney Portier is excellent as the apparent leader of Glenn Ford's class who gradually comes to recognize that this teacher really cares about them. Vic Morrow is the disruptive force in the group who tries to undermine Glenn Ford's efforts to teach this group the value of education. Kind of a "sleeper" movie of its day, with deeper implications for its time than originally felt by those who saw it.Movie Review: More Exploitation Than Exploration of Juvenile Delinquency
Summary: 4 Stars
"The Blackboard Jungle" raises many interesting questions about the root causes of student apathy and delinquency in the inner-city schools. At the same time it seems to wallow in the most extreme behavior of students i.e. a near rape of an attractive female teacher, multiple assaults on teachers, a student brandishing a switchblade in the classroom. One character is enigmatic to me, the Artie West character played by Vic Morrow. Not to say that Morrow doesn't play the character well because he is sufficiently menacing but it seemed over-the-top for the film. There is much to recommend in this film particularly the starring role of Richard Dadier played by Glenn Ford. Ford's solid acting keeps the film from veering into melodrama. A young Sidney Poitier as Gregory Miller, a gifted student whose superior intellect is wasted in this apathetic environment, does a charismatic turn. In a note of irony, in 1967 Poitier portrayed a teacher attempting to make a difference in an inner-city school in what I feel is a superior film, "To Sir, With Love".