Blackboard Jungle (1955)

(On Cable TV, June 2021) I stand corrected — for as long as there’s been a definition of the teenager in the postwar economic boom, there have been movies about teenage delinquency and its obvious counterpart, the inspiring teacher film. Blackboard Jungle is part of that first cohort of movies warning parents about the teenage threat lurking at home and delighting teenagers who realized what they were capable of doing. On the one hand, it’s undoubtedly a film of its time in its period depiction of a tough New York City school, its teenaged hoodlums and the righteousness of its protagonist (Glenn Ford, quite likable) in trying to save the worthy kids and expel the bad ones. At the same time, there’s also a timeless quality to the hostility that the teacher faces from the students, the ways he tries to reach them through their façade, and the power plays going on in a class of many different students. It’s even surprisingly modern in depicting how teachers react to the constant stress of a confrontational classroom, the way third-parties can be harassed and how public comments can be twisted to discredit someone. Socially engaged, Blackboard Jungle works itself up to a gripping climax as a classroom lesson escalates to a knife fight between an incorrigible bad apple and a teacher who has decided he’s got nothing left to lose. Also notable for introducing the use of a pop song as the main theme (the all-time classic “Rock Around the Clock”), and one of Sydney Poitier’s early roles — in which he predictably excels. (He’d play the flip side of the student/teacher divide twelve years later in To Sir, With Love.)  Contemporary commentary on Blackboard Jungle shows how much the film pushed the envelope at the time, and how the studio took political hits for it. But at the same time, it’s a film that suggests what could have been had Hollywood had been just a bit more willing to engage with social issues at a crucial time, and what would have happened if the Hays Code had disappeared even a decade earlier.