Ragazze perdute

In one of her earliest roles young teen Diana Dors is being given a lecture by social worker Flora Robson on the evils of wilful disobedience to her parents. Flora decides to best make her point by example and she chooses to tell Diana the story of Jean Kent and her downward spiral from when she started out as a teen delinquent just like Dors.

It begins innocently enough, Kent has a job in a pawnshop and she borrows some of the jewelry to wear on a date. The owner catches her and threatens to report her to the police. But he'll forget it with a quick roll in the hay. She goes home and dad whales the tar out of her. After that it's a lot of poor choices combined with being in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people.

Kent does a fine job even though she's 27 years old as the troubled young post war British girl. Along the way she meets up with playboy Dennis Price, club owner Herbert Lom, hood Peter Glenville, and finally deserter American soldier Bonar Colleano who puts the final touch to a short but violent criminal career.

A good ensemble cast backs Kent. But the story is about her and she's memorable in her part.

The thought that people like Jimmy Rosso exist makes my skin crawl. While the movie was pretty good, I did find one glaring plot hole. This was during the hearing in juvenile court. It came down to he said, she said. She said that Jimmy had put her up to pawning the jewelry, and he said she had asked him to. This leaves reasonable doubt. The tie-breaker was the fact that she had used her own name when pawning the jewelry, which is consistent with innocence.

Michael Farrell's testimony was disregarded in its entirety when he disclosed that he had sheltered the girl for the night. The magistrate took the word of the oily Jimmy Rosso over the word of the accused and that of Michael Farrell, who had a job and a flat, as opposed to Rosso, who had nothing, and was implicated in a slashing.

Hard to believe it was like that, but I imagine it was.

Jean Kent plays Gwen--a poor girl from a screwed up family. Her sense of right and wrong are sadly diminished and her father is abusive. So, she leaves home at 16 and tries to make her way in the world. But, she always seems to hang out with low-lifes--the sort of jerks that are constantly preying on society. Eventually, she's caught for one of their crimes but she runs away from prison. At this point, she's a mess but she's not necessarily evil. But, soon after escaping, she begins to hit the bottle and becomes a very active and willing participant in a life of crime. And, in the process, she becomes a total mess.

All in all, an entertaining film. And, while it could have been made as a purely sensationalistic movie, this one is able to tell a gritty story and yet not revel in it. Enjoyable and entertaining.

Good Time Girl (1948)

This movie has so many turns and developments it's hard to remember everything by the time you get to the sensational terrible end. A girl leaves home to escape her father's beatings and one thing leads to another down the line. It's post-war England, and there are fun echoes of similar post-war American movies, complete with thugs and nightclubs and G.I.s on the lam.

This leading actress Jean Kent starts off seeming a little strained, and you should make sure you give the movie a chance. It only gets better as it goes. It never quite strains credibility even though the events gets pretty unsavory. The photography, much of it at night, is vivid and fluid, the acting generally excellent, and the strength of ideas is wonderful.

This really is a harrowing tale of social mis-steps all along. It's meant to be a cautionary tale, too. Literally. It's all told in a flashback to another young woman who is about to repeat the fate of the main character. Kent turns out to be pretty amazing in this film, ranging through several phases of her young life on camera--from innocent girl to hardened juvenile to a kind of moll without a gang.

I liked it a lot.

When this film had been completed an official from the Home Office viewed it and as a result the Labour government tries to stop the film being released.The reason for this was the poor light in which the approved school system was shown.So the producers had to shoot the framing device with Flora Robson.It is clear that the authorities did not know what to do about teenagers.In fact this film shows Jean Kent's character in a favourable light and authority less so.After all because Kent has been beaten by her father and cant go home she is given 3 years in an approved school.So rather typical of the period Kent has a whale of a time till the last reel when she must pay for misdeeds.The last part of the film is based on real events which were portrayed in a later film with Emily Lloyd Pack.