Amazon.com video review:
Novelist Evan Hunter burst America's postwar bubble when he described an
inner-city school terrorized by switchblade-wielding juvenile delinquents.
Director-screenwriter Richard Brooks's 1955 adaptation of Blackboard
Jungle
still packs a tremendous wallop (even if it was shot mostly on the
back lot). A
forerunner of Rebel Without a Cause and West Side Story, this
black-and-white classic--set to Bill Haley and His Comets' "Rock Around the
Clock"--is part exposé,
part melodrama, part public-service announcement. "It is the frankest, the
toughest, the most realistic film since On the Waterfront,"
ballyhooed MGM at the time.
Glenn Ford, at his slow-to-rile best, plays Richard Dadier, an
incoming English teacher at North Manual High School. An idealist
who knows how to
handle himself in a dark alley, Dadier stands his ground and earns the
begrudging respect of school thugs led by Vic Morrow and Sidney Poitier.
Anne
Francis plays Ford's especially vulnerable wife; Richard
Kiley (later in Brooks's Looking for Mr. Goodbar) is the timid math
teacher
with the priceless jazz-record collection; Louis Calhern and John Hoyt are
among the more cynical North Manual High veterans. See if you can ID Jamie Farr
and
director Paul Mazursky as gang members. The film was nominated for four
Oscars. --Glenn Lovell
