frankwiener I have to take issue with other reviewers who question the credibility of the story. The script was based on the original novel by Evan Hunter, which was inspired by his own true life experiences as a severely challenged and very disappointed public high school teacher in the South Bronx of New York City. Unfortunately, many of our inner city schools have only become more miserable with time, as difficult as that may be to believe.This film was a success as the result of an excellent, fast moving script and a fine set of actors who bring out the best of each other's abilities. The action is paced very well with four separate instances of brutal violence distributed evenly throughout the time frame. In between, the central character, Richard Dadier (Glenn Ford) struggles with his decision to accept a teaching job in the inner city when he could easily find employment in a much better school where his academic mentor serves as principal. While Dadier's decision to tough it out is commendable, how many folks in his place would have opted for the other school? I thought that this was one of Ford's most convincing and most intelligent performances, and he has appeared in many movies.Sidney Poitier is excellent as Miller, the stereotype-defying student identified early by Dadier as a potential leader who could help him steer the class away from total disruption and chaos. In a little more than a decade later, as the lead in "To Sir With Love", Poitier would be standing in Dadier's shoes as a teacher in another rough inner city high school, this time on the other side of the Atlantic in London, England. Was that just a casting coincidence or perhaps deliberate? Watching Richard Kiley portraying the idealistic and quite naïve Josh Edwards, I had difficulty believing that this was the very same man who played a much more charismatic idealist on stage a decade later as Don Quixote in the musical, "Man of La Mancha". What a difference a decade makes. Vic Morrow is unforgettable as the detestable rascal, Artie West. I suppose that Dadier would be fired today for knocking this scoundrel repeatedly against the blackboard, but who needs this impossible job anyway when you can do much better somewhere else and where you might even be appreciated by your students?The title song "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley and His Comets is one of my favorite early rock 'n roll tunes of the 1950's. Unfortunately, using the song as the film's theme song may have perpetuated the idea among many adults at the time that rock 'n roll music contributed to what they termed then as "juvenile delinquency". In reality, many of us managed to stay out of jail in spite of the fact that we loved rock 'n roll then, and we still love it to this day while maintaining relatively clean rap sheets.

De_Sam 1955, the year that Nicolas Ray showed America the alienated teenagers and consequences with Rebel Without a Cause, quite similarly to this film. Yet, Rebel without a cause approaches the subject through the eyes of the teenagers, Blackboard Jungle talks about the problem as experienced by the adults, immediately making it much more patronising and judgmental.Warner Bros. pictures, the studio behind Rebel without a Cause, has always been a more working class studio, which gives them more authority to handle problems of the public.The fact that Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the most middle- class American of the big studios made this film contributes to the mocking character of the film. Especially the beginning text, stating that 'America needs to know about these problems or else the United States are doomed!'As it stands, the film begins with this air of superiority and never recovers from it. The inclusion of 'Rock around the Clock' in addition to great performances of Glenn Ford and Sidney Poitier could be considered saving graces if you were able to look past this systematic flaw, I was not.

ElMaruecan82 For all the classics that came out the 50's, no movie moment stuck in my mind as obsessively as the first three minutes of "Blackboard Jungle".A disclaimer crawls on the screen, stating the film's reason to be: a warning on the rise of juvenile delinquency, troubling the lethargy of an American society resting on its economical laurels. And the military drum beat, fitting the gravity of the subject, prepares you for the worst. Then, in a totally opposed mood, it turns to the iconic "1,2,3 o'clock, 4 o'clock Rock", basically, the birth cry of Rock 'n' Roll, the other emerging phenomenon. Cinema and music have always worked hand-to-hand but never has the symbiosis been so timely.Rock became the rallying sound of a lost generation, torn between the baby-boomers and the War vets, the lucky and the prestigious ones. The film features a significant scene where pupils destroy their teacher's precious collection of jazz records, as to emphasize a generational gap that translated into the world of music. Rock had the same defiance toward Jazz and Blues, and it's only natural that kids enthusiastically responded to "Rock Around the Clock" in theaters. The music was to the film what "Born to be Wild" would be for "Easy Rider", a youth-defining hymn, paving the way for a new form of artistic expression.Rock, then Coca Cola, fast foods, drive-ins, and leather jackets, modeled the lost-in-space generation turning rebellion, through the figures of James Dean and Elvis, to marketed values. But "Blackboard Jungle" is no "Rebel without a Cause" or "The Wild One", it's a social commentary about the roots of violence in America's youth, without any attempt to romanticize it. School becomes the altar where kids are sacrificed because of poverty, ethnicity and a lack of education due to the absence of fathers when they were kids in WW2. The point is not to inspire pity or sympathy but to portray them from the perspective of a teacher, Richard Dadier, played by Glenn Ford, whose vocation is to get them interested on education.But paraphrasing "Cool Hand Luke", what Dadier's got in the urban jungle he's stranded in, is a failure to communicate, some kids that can't be reached, the biggest barer being the absence of models that could've made the very concept of authority and excellence acceptable. Dadier, nicknamed Daddy-O, embodies all the ungratefulness of being a teacher. Mr. Murdock, one of his colleagues played by the incomparable Louis Calhern, compared the school to the "garbage can of the educational system". As harsh as it sounds, the metaphor amused me since I've always thought garbage men practiced a noble profession, by handling the 'dirty' stuff we wouldn't dare to touch.But if Dadier surrendered to the idea that some souls can't be reach, he'd betray his vocation, and the thrills of "Blackboard Jungle" lies on that dilemma, and the constant pressure endured from the kids in general and the two 'leaders' in particular. There is Miller, Sidney Poitier as the most charismatic (tallest and strongest too) of the group and the hardest nut to crack, Artie West, played a young Vic Morrow. It's easy to see in "Blackboard Jungle", the movie that 'started them all', when a zealous teacher face the defiance of rebellious kids from poorer areas to guide them with the light of knowledge and self-confidence, usually by using words, and force if necessary.Naturally, force is indispensable in a jungle-word like. You have early glimpses of Brooks' documentary-like realism that will pinnacle with his masterpiece "In Cold Blood". In "Blackboard Jungle", the pupils commit the worst that is coming to every teacher. I mentioned the records' breaking, which was already painful to watch, but it went as far as an attempt to rape the attractive teacher Lois Hammond (Margaret Harris). Even Dadier would be beaten up for having injured the culprit. And it's still nothing compared to the harassment Dadier's pregnant wife (Anne Francis) would be victim of, making the antagonism between Dadier and his pupils more personal.At many parts of the film, we're tempted to approve Murdock's opinion, but Dadier understands that it's for reasons like that that teaching takes all its meaning, and the only way to accept that the causes of thirty students aren't lost, is to spot the truly rotten apples and prevent the class from their bad influence. "Blackboard Jungle" is perhaps one of the only teachers-film that doesn't fall in the blissfully angelic trap trying to convince us that "all kids are good". Indeed, the film tackles many subjects such as race, sex and crime without going too preachy and deal with them, with a realism ahead of its time. Glenn Ford is impeccable as the struggling well-meaning and sometimes wrong average man but it's Poitier's talent that clearly emerges.Poitier who was respected for his natural predispositions as a leader turned out as vulnerable as any other, finally winning the trust of Dadier. I thought he was playing a character opposed to his soft-spoken, well-mannered teacher facing the same issues in "To Sir, With Love" but in fact, he exudes the same straightness and gentleness in "Blackboard Jungle", making it almost a prequel for "To Sir, With Love". Ultimately, all the films with teachers facing rebellious classes owe something to "Blackboard Jungle". It's to "Rebellious Minds" or "Stand to Deliver" what "Little Caesar" and "Public Enemy" were to "The Godfather" and "Goodfellas", obligatory eye-openers on phenomena that would apply to any time, hence the timelessness of these genres.And it's then not surprising that like the seminal gangster movies, "Blackboard Jungle" opens with a disclaimer, what became banal today was still new at that time, a public warning was needed. But not today, which is even sadder; there are still "Blackboard Jungles" right now, except that kids would listen more to Rap music and break Bill Haley's records!

Tre' Brandon Blackboard Jungle was a harsh movie that exampled the dangers and harshness of teaching kids that have been inundated in a mad entity of racism, violence, and delinquency. Blackboard Jungle is a wondrous movie with real life themes that have been and will continue to be important to society. This movie is a great example of not only the harsh lives people are forcibly born into, but the lives that are affected by these people's actions. This is initially displayed when Artie West and his gang attack Dadier and his friend on the way home from a bar. It's incredible and discouraging to notice these incidents still issues today, 60 years later. Very refined and straight to the point in every scene, it doesn't lead you on pointless tangents that don't further the story. Every scene digs deeper and deeper into the problem and does so elegantly and smoothly. Where Dadier succeeded, other teachers failed. This movie shows the discrimination more among race than gender, though that's also an underlying theme. Miller, a student content with dropping out early, realizing that his schooling will get him nowhere in life solely based on his color, is a prime antagonist until he and Dadier begin to talk and see the world from each other's point-of-view. Intelligent for a boy his age, Miller sees the error of his ways and decides to help his teacher any way he's able to, just like in the finale when he protected Dadier from students trying to attack him from the back.Though gender is a bit less of an issue, it's still a bit undermining the way Anne is portrayed in this film. She has had one miscarriage before and is being torn apart by letters of threats and lies, saying that her husband is having an affair. Anne is showed to be a weak, unresting woman with insecurities to tire any man out. Fear is one thing humans can never truly escape, but she takes the word to a whole new level, having a premature birth due to the fear of her husband cheating, rather than simple talking to him more about when given the chance. Not all women are weak individuals who rely on their man to keep them from losing sanity and she was portrayed as a human who could hardly exist without someone giving her constant watch.Finally, this movie comes to a close with Dadier standing up to his most troublesome student in a finale that, while blunt, keeps you on the end of your seat and lusting for the next scene. If you watch this movie with an open-mind, you begin to realize things that you might not before, you begin to understand people's feelings, the sorrow, fear, and anger behind everything, whether it be Millers decision to drop out or Dadiers resolution to quit his dangerous occupation. This entire movie is situationally ironic in and of itself in the fact that it took ex- military personnel to calm the storm that was a gang of trifling students.