While it might look tame today, Blackboard Jungle was a shocker when it was first released in 1955. It wasn't every movie that showed the average city high school kid as a thug, trying to rape a pretty teacher in her classroom after the closing bell one minute, and beating the stuffing out a pair of male teachers in an alley the next. Yet idealistic Glenn Ford keeps on trying to get through to these kids. He's a one man Bill Bennett morality brigade. Why he cares so much is never made clear. It's not that he likes these guys. They taunt him, make fun of him, twist his words around, interrupt him when he's trying to give a simple, perfectly reasonable English lesson, refuse to answer questions, and in general make his life a living hell. The movie raises all kinds of interesting questions about the kids (nature versus nurture, etc.), but never seriously addresses the biggest question of all, which is why teacher Ford stays with his job. He says he wants to "get through" to the kids. Get what through? Why even care? That the older teachers stay on makes sense. They're looking to their retirements. Many are probably products of the same mean streets as their students, so they have a certain familiarity with their kind.
Aside from not addressing what seems to me the biggest issue of all, the movie is excellent when it sticks to the hellions themselves. It really comes to life when sadist Vic Morrow, the baddest of a very bad bunch, has the stage, as his continual provoking of Ford and his wife is disturbingly personal. Nor are Morrow's reasons for such behavior ever explained. At the other end of the spectrum is good guy Sidney Poitier, more mature and polished than the other students, and Ford's favorite.
Director Richard Brooks works wonders with his backlot high school, which really seems to smell of chalk. This is a wonderfully designed film, capturing perfectly the look and feel of the old high schools, with their clanking radiators and dingy, forbidding bathrooms, with rags hanging from the walls. Seldom has institutional life been so well-captured in a commercial film. There's not a lot of characterization of the other teachers, but we see and hear enough to get the point. They're a cynical, demoralized, bitter lot, and one really can't blame them.
Blackboard Jungle has so many good and bad things in it that it's hard to separate them. It's suffused with standard issue Eisenhower era "can do" idealism, and yet the evidence it offers suggests that this particular school and neighborhood might not be worth the effort. Yes, Ford does "break through" with some kids, but will this last? He can't very well clean up the entire city, set dysfunctional families right, throw away the gin bottles the parents of these kids swill down every night. Morrow's evil character is an extreme psychopath. Most kids aren't quite so bad, just semi-bad. But put a bunch of semi-bad sixteen years olds together and you've got a monster. They don't need a Vic Morrow to lead them. Pack mentality will do the job. Yet Ford's optimism is infectious (if vague at the source), and one can't help but admire him. There are some funny scenes in the movie, which is by no means grim all the time, as director-writer Brooks nicely balanced his natural liberal didacticism with a sense of reality. When Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" blares on the sound-track at the end, we feel that we're really been someplace, seen something. Brooks pulls it all together,--the preaching, the music, the hope, the despair. It may not make a lot of sense, but there it is. A very American movie.
Aside from not addressing what seems to me the biggest issue of all, the movie is excellent when it sticks to the hellions themselves. It really comes to life when sadist Vic Morrow, the baddest of a very bad bunch, has the stage, as his continual provoking of Ford and his wife is disturbingly personal. Nor are Morrow's reasons for such behavior ever explained. At the other end of the spectrum is good guy Sidney Poitier, more mature and polished than the other students, and Ford's favorite.
Director Richard Brooks works wonders with his backlot high school, which really seems to smell of chalk. This is a wonderfully designed film, capturing perfectly the look and feel of the old high schools, with their clanking radiators and dingy, forbidding bathrooms, with rags hanging from the walls. Seldom has institutional life been so well-captured in a commercial film. There's not a lot of characterization of the other teachers, but we see and hear enough to get the point. They're a cynical, demoralized, bitter lot, and one really can't blame them.
Blackboard Jungle has so many good and bad things in it that it's hard to separate them. It's suffused with standard issue Eisenhower era "can do" idealism, and yet the evidence it offers suggests that this particular school and neighborhood might not be worth the effort. Yes, Ford does "break through" with some kids, but will this last? He can't very well clean up the entire city, set dysfunctional families right, throw away the gin bottles the parents of these kids swill down every night. Morrow's evil character is an extreme psychopath. Most kids aren't quite so bad, just semi-bad. But put a bunch of semi-bad sixteen years olds together and you've got a monster. They don't need a Vic Morrow to lead them. Pack mentality will do the job. Yet Ford's optimism is infectious (if vague at the source), and one can't help but admire him. There are some funny scenes in the movie, which is by no means grim all the time, as director-writer Brooks nicely balanced his natural liberal didacticism with a sense of reality. When Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" blares on the sound-track at the end, we feel that we're really been someplace, seen something. Brooks pulls it all together,--the preaching, the music, the hope, the despair. It may not make a lot of sense, but there it is. A very American movie.