Graine de violence

Blackboard Jungle is one of the seminal films in Glenn Ford's career. As Richard Dadier, newly minted teacher going into one of the inner city schools in New York City, he's nervous, but full of idealism and commitment that he can make a difference in the lives of these kids.

One of the aspects of Blackboard Jungle that is never discussed is the problem, still very much with us today, of illiteracy. For me the key to the whole story is when Ford has to get down to the level of running a movie cartoon of Jack and the Beanstalk in order to communicate with them. That's when he reaches them and also takes control of the situation in his classroom away from the school thug as graphically portrayed by Vic Morrow.

I was involved with someone for many years and his literacy level was very low. It made him angry and unable to handle the world and all the problems he had in life. He had a worse situation than the kids in The Blackboard Jungle. He was raised in a group home where they didn't care at all if you learned anything.

Blackboard Jungle is also memorable for the use of a previously recorded song by Bill Haley and the Comets that sold a few records the year earlier, but didn't set the world on fire. Director Richard Brooks heard it in young Peter Ford's collection and decided it would be his theme. Rock Around the Clock became a rock and roll institution after The Blackboard Jungle was out in theaters.

Blackboard Jungle also started another less fortunate trend. That of picking very obviously adult actors to play high school kids. A trend that has continued to this day with such shows as Beverly Hills 90210 carrying on the tradition. Capable players that they are and they certainly delivered fine performances, Sidney Poitier and Vic Morrow don't look like high school kids, especially not next to Rafael Campos who was in the correct age bracket when the film was being shot.

Teacher burnout is also covered in Blackboard Jungle with Louis Calhern leading the pack of cynics Glenn Ford has as colleagues. In many ways Blackboard Jungle is the grandfather of a film like Stand and Deliver where Edward James Olmos is the dedicated math teacher of inner city kids a generation later. Other than ethnic, not too much difference between Richard Dadier and Jaime Escalante.

Richard Brooks assembled and directed a cast that made a classic that's still agonizingly relevant today.

A history professor once told me, "If you want to change history, become a historian." This statement might also apply to movie critics. I came of age (turned 13) when I saw this movie when it was first released in 1955. My buds and I liked the movie, not because it was a shocker, which it was not, but because it dealt fairly realistically with teenagers, much more so than say the old Andy Hardy series. To my knowledge no one was really shocked by this movie. There was no big hoopla by "concerned" citizens as there would be when Elia Kazan's "Baby Doll" played on the same screen a few years later. And "Rock Around The Clock" was not considered rock 'n' roll by most teens, only a pop hit along the lines of "Sh-boom." The first record actually considered rock 'n' roll by most teens was Chuck Berry's "Maybelline." When my buds and I first heard it on the radio, we stopped the car and listened intently to a new kind of teen music. That did not happen with anything Bill Haley and the Comets put on wax. Those who say "The Blackboard Jungle" was a shocker simply did not live through that period of history. Some of these same critics believe that the average family of the 50's was like the one portrayed on "Leave It To Beaver." I knew of no family in my neighborhood that lived like the Cleavers. We found "Rebel Without a Cause" and a somewhat neglected film "The Wild One" to be the ones that related to our rebellious side. "The Wild One," especially Marlon Brando's performance, was the standout film for us teens in those days. Another later Robert Mitchum flick, "Thunder Road," was also a movie that spoke to the teens of the period. Marlon Brando, James Dean, and Robert Mitchum were movie role models for many of us growing up in the turbulent 50's, not Glenn Ford or even Vic Morrow and Sidney Poitier.

That's not to say that this movie is not worth seeing, for it is a good movie dealing in a somewhat no nonsense way with teaching rebellious and sometimes dangerous teens, who see nothing relevant in book learning and who don't want to be exposed to the higher levels of intellectual endeavors. How do you teach the unteachable? Still a challenge today in the American classroom.

After nearly 50 years, this memorable movie about a New York City high school remains a standard by which so-called 'high school' movies are judged, made and measured. Without Blackboard Jungle, there might not have been a Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Pretty in Pink, or Breakfast Club.

Before Sidney Poitier 'came to dinner', before Vic Morrow went into 'Combat', before Richard Kiley 'dreamed the impossible dream', and, yes, even before Jamie Farr (ne Jameel Farah), donned a dress, they were all part of The Blackboard Jungle. This movie launched quite a few notable careers.

Blackboard Jungle (1955)

There is so much intensity and visual punch to this socially concerned schoolhouse narrative, it's hard to not overlook the pushiness of some of the plot and the blatant stereotyping of most of the characters. Glen Ford is, in fact, truly commanding here, and he becomes the movie. Most of the rest, really all the rest, are supporting roles, and not all of them do him credit. And this comes not from lack of talent, but from a script that has too many little agendas at work. Hey, but they are important and interesting agendas, so fear not. It's exciting going every step of the way.

Even young Sydney Poitier, for all his charm and ease on screen, is forced into a role, as a reluctant but talented student, that makes him a two-dimensional, and his relationship with Ford is pushed on us at the expense of the others. Some of the other teachers are convincing in their own ways, most of all Louis Calhern as a grumpy and jaded older teacher who expects the worst and gets it. There are moments of high drama that work--mostly violence or the avoidance of violence--and there are moments too contrived and too foreshadowed to contribute very much. The female teacher is set up to tempt the determined Ford main character, and she plays out in expected ways.

It might be a testament, actually, that the movie grabs you and won't let go even with these storytelling flaws. For one thing, it looks great (with photography by Russell Harlan) and is edited crisply, so technically it soars (and in a vivid widescreen black and white, not 4:3 like IMDb says). The director, Richard Brooks, clearly makes the most of the material. His career has left us a number of almost great movies, and this might be his greatest. It seems to have had the most impact in its time, sparking violence in the theaters where it was shown. And by using "Rock Around the Clock" it helped make Bill Halley and Comets and white rock and roll hugely popular.

But as just a movie, on the screen, it is Ford who takes on the subtle turmoils going on in his character's head, and you read it in his face and his stiff body language, and you believe him.

"Blackboard Jungle" marked a turn around in films coming from Hollywood. This was a film that dealt with a reality that movies had not dared to touch before in the way they always wanted to sugar coat every picture about teens in high school. The guys one sees here are the real thing, as though taken from any high school in the inner city of that time.

The amazing thing this high school, at the center of the action, is not typical of any other schools in that one males attended and no females are to be seen around them. By making an old male high school, Richard Brooks updated Evan Hunter's novel to show the violent nature of most of those young men that are clearly from under privileged homes, perhaps, boys whose fathers had bolted and left their women to bring up the sons they didn't want to have anything with.

The film is important in that it marked the arrival of a strong actor that would dominate the movies like no other one, Sidney Poitier. With his handsome looks, and his great screen presence, Mr. Poitier was instrumental in breaking into the main stream movies in ways others tried, but didn't make a dent. Perhaps it was in the cards that Hollywood began dealing with a reality they tried to ignore integrating their stories with Blacks that had taken a back seat to other, not so talented performers.

The film works because of the strong performances by Glenn Ford, Vic Morrow and Sidney Poitier. Also, the theme song of the film, "Rock Around the Clock" went to become an anthem for viewers that filled the theaters for the thrill of hearing it play as the film started, putting them in the right frame of mind to accept what they were going to see.

Richard Brooks is the one responsible for the adaptation and the inspired direction for the movie that still resonates because of its raw energy.