Boys in Brown

At the time of making this film Borstals had inmates up to the age of 23, so the actors look right for the parts they play. One of the inmates in the film is married and has 2 children so the critics who say the actors are too old are wrong.

In this well-intentioned movie, Richard Attenborough gets slung into a Borstal with Jack Warner as the warden and Derek Bogarde as the rather creepy guy who rules the cell blocks. Although the Borstal system -- which I know as turning out junior-grade spivs -- was for those youths who were less than 24 when they went in, the actors playing the boys ranged in ages from 29 through their early thirties. In their shorts, they put me in mind of 1950s Bowery Boys.

Still, the actors are good, Jack Warner utters some platitudes and the result remains watchable. With Jimmy Hanley, Barbara Murray, Patrick Holt, and the mighty Thora Hird.

Most of this film is set at a reform school for young offenders. I had to laugh at this because most of the actors are in their late 20s and some look well over 30! So the word 'Boys' in the title seems hardly appropriate!

Jackie Knowles (Richard Attenborough) is a young punk who has already been arrested for some petty crime. He didn't learn his lesson and soon is arrested again and is sent to the reform school. Jackie seems like he's not too bad a sort and he decides to apply himself, do his time and make something of himself. Unfortunately, there are a lot of guys who are more than happy to keep Jackie down...particularly the rat- like Alfie (Dirk Bogarde). When a group of the 'boys' want to escape, Alfie insists that he'll make Jackie join them....even if it means lying and manipulating to get his cooperation.

Overall, this is a reasonably well made and entertaining film which emphasizes humane treatment and reform. In many ways, it's a bit like some of the early Dead End Kids films in this respect. Worth seeing mostly so you can see Bogarde and Attenborough as they both were fine actors even when they were 'boys'!

Some great British actors were building their career foundations in this drama about the pressures of life both inside and outside a Borstal reform institution. In particular, Dirk Bogarde makes an excellent scheming manipulator of his fellow inmates while Richard Attenborough is his naive prey.

The Borstal governor and his staff lament that the young men in their charge won't try harder to become good citizens, while the young inmates themselves can't see beyond peer pressure and adolescent rebellion - that much at least hasn't changed since 1949.

But the passage of time has not served this movie well. Its main interest now is historical, in the very early performances of future superstars and in documenting a vanished way of British life and values. We've all seen a multitude of tough prison movies made in later years and in their light this one seems rather pale.

If you've ever wanted to see Dirk Bogarde in shorts then this is the film for you!! (Today's generation of young offenders would probably regard being made to wear short trousers cruel & unusual punishment in itself; and I still haven't decided yet who looks more grotesque in shorts, Alfie Bass in this or Roman Polanski in 'A Generation'!)

One of the final gasps, incredibly enough, of Gainsborough Pictures; and based, even more incredibly, on a play by Reginald Beckwith, 'Boys in Brown' is yet another stern warning to the youth of postwar austerity Britain to stick to the straight and narrow or face severe consequences.

Three of the cast were promptly reunited in 'The Blue Lamp'; Jack Warner & Jimmy Hanley as coppers, Bogarde as the zoot-suited spiv taught an even harsher lesson that crime is a mug's game.