From the mid-1950s comes this story of a widowed mother finding herself powerless as her teenage daughter gradually goes 'off the rails' after falling in with the wrong crowd, yet watched from a modern perspective it seems somewhat flawed in its attempts at moralising.
Anna Neagle plays the mother, Valerie Carr, who works in lowly position in women's magazines. Supposedly having to save up for weeks to buy her eldest daughter a new dress, she nevertheless seems well kitted out herself and lives in a big posh house with two daughters and an aunt.
Sylvia Syms plays the elder child, the 17-year-old Jan, and for some reason that is never properly explained she is in attendance at an elegant party at the exclusive Savoy Hotel, where she instantly falls for another attendee named Tony (Kenneth Haigh) who admits he finds it all rather staid and tells the impressionable teenager all about a livelier dance called 'jive', and later that evening teaches her the movements out on the veranda. It is the start of a romance and the pair start meeting regularly, with Tony taking Jan to funfairs, speedway races and teaching her to drive his Bentley on quiet country roads.
Valerie, meanwhile, is unexpectedly given a promotion to the position of fiction editor of a new magazine for teenagers, through which she meets Hugh Manning (Norman Wooland), who writes novels for young adults. Hugh is attracted to Val from the beginning, and when he hears she is unattached he begins to woo her.
As events develop, Val becomes increasingly disapproving of Jan's frequenting of nightclubs and of Tony's influence over her. She wants Jan to instead hook-up with straight-laced farmboy Mark.
However, Jan rebels more and more against her mother's interference. When she finds out that Tony isn't as wealthy as he claims, that he has only borrowed the Bentley and that he is in debt, she is no less attracted to him, but her loyalty to him eventually results in her being arrested by the police, bringing great shame on herself and her family.
Although the film is engaging and tells an interesting story, it has two fundemantal problems. The first is that it totally misunderstands youth culture and the second is that it can't seem to make its mind up whether the viewer is supposed to dislike the character of Tony or sympathise with him. The combination of the two severely impairs its depiction of a youth's slide into bad character and ultimately leaves one questioning the behaviour of the mother.
A lot of the things that 'the wrong crowd' are doing in this film are, in fact, perfectly innocent and suggest some paranoia on the part of the writers and producers towards the changing culture of the times. The worst things that 'bad boy' Tony does in this film are that he encourages Jan to smoke and drink, he teaches her to drive, he gatecrashes parties, he lies about his wealth (but later comes clean), he engages in fisticuffs if some drunken lout makes a move on his girl, and, when driven to absolute desperation, he steals money. On the plus side he is shown to generally care for Jan, and he is well mannered and well dressed. There's no suggestion he's pressuring her into sex.
Compare this with the behaviour of the mother, Valerie, who can clear off to New York for a few days without a thought for her daughters, who can enjoy her own romance (with a man who smokes, no less), who chastises her daughter for borrowing one of her dresses and for using a taxi cab, who locks her daughter in her bedroom and who denies her access to her own savings. She even lets the younger daughter stay unchaperoned on the farm with Mark.
The attempts to portray youth culture frequently make the viewer cringe. For a start, the film only has the one 'hip' music track (the ironically named "Get With It"), which is played repetitively, as though it's the only number the live musicians in the nightclub know how to perform. "What's the meaning of that look on your face?" the aunt asks Jan as she's demonstrating the jive to her. "Oh, that's getting into the MOOD!" comes the excited reply. When Val tells her boss that she finds the idea of her promotion "Absolutely blissful", she has to explain this strange new teenage expression to him. Even the opening titles and theme tune would have you think you are going to be sitting through some romantic period costume drama rather than an insight into the modern problem of juvenile delinquency. Edmond Greville's "Beat Girl", released in 1960, which explores some similar ideas, gets so many things right that this film gets wrong.
In spite of the fragile quality of the material, Sylvia Syms performs her role well and it's little wonder she was destined for better things, and very soon, too. It's remarkable to think that just two years later she'd be starring in the exemplary "Ice Cold In Alex".
Review of Teenage Bad Girl
