Blackboard Jungle (1955)
Glenn Ford is a teacher, sent to a boys’ high school in a bad neighborhood. After a disastrous first day, he’s temped to leave and try and find work in another area. But, as he and his pregnant wife Anne Francis know, there’s no position available anywhere else. If there were, he would have gone there in the first place. So, as his fellow teachers Louis Calhern, Margaret Hayes, and Richard Kiley, advise him, he just has to keep his head down and survive the school year. They’re not teaching boys who have dreams of college, a career, or a lustrous life; their students are hoodlums who get in daily fights and bring knives to class.
Glenn Ford was such a prolific actor and made memorable classics in several genres, but Blackboard Jungle is one of his most iconic roles. He’s naturally sincere and passionate and delivers his lines so convincingly it’s as if he thought of them on the spot instead of reciting Richard Brooks’s script. When he tries to help the lost-cause students, you’re inspired, when he singles out one of the kids to try and get an ally in the classroom, you see the same potential, and when he finally looses his temper, you’re similarly enraged.
While there have been dozens of remakes throughout the decades about a do-good-er teacher who is sent to a school in the slums and tries to make a difference, Blackboard Jungle was the first. It was particularly gritty for its time, but even now it’s still extremely suspenseful and hard to watch. As if the boundary-pushing subject matter wasn’t reason enough to make this classic famous, it propelled Sidney Poitier to stardom. It wasn’t his first movie, but the film was nominated for four Oscars and became very famous. In case you’ve never seen this film and naturally assumed Sidney was cast as the noble teacher because of his famous classic To Sir, with Love, which is one of the more famous remakes in the genre, he’s actually one of the unruly students! So if you’ve only seen him in strictly good-guy roles, you might want to rent this one and see him in a different part.
Kiddy Warning: Obviously, you have control over your own children. However, due to gritty violence I wouldn’t let my kids watch it. Also, there may or may not be a rape scene.
Want to watch it? Click here to watch it on ok.ru. And thanks "Juhi Thaker" for posting!
More Sidney Poitier movies here!
Glenn Ford was such a prolific actor and made memorable classics in several genres, but Blackboard Jungle is one of his most iconic roles. He’s naturally sincere and passionate and delivers his lines so convincingly it’s as if he thought of them on the spot instead of reciting Richard Brooks’s script. When he tries to help the lost-cause students, you’re inspired, when he singles out one of the kids to try and get an ally in the classroom, you see the same potential, and when he finally looses his temper, you’re similarly enraged.
While there have been dozens of remakes throughout the decades about a do-good-er teacher who is sent to a school in the slums and tries to make a difference, Blackboard Jungle was the first. It was particularly gritty for its time, but even now it’s still extremely suspenseful and hard to watch. As if the boundary-pushing subject matter wasn’t reason enough to make this classic famous, it propelled Sidney Poitier to stardom. It wasn’t his first movie, but the film was nominated for four Oscars and became very famous. In case you’ve never seen this film and naturally assumed Sidney was cast as the noble teacher because of his famous classic To Sir, with Love, which is one of the more famous remakes in the genre, he’s actually one of the unruly students! So if you’ve only seen him in strictly good-guy roles, you might want to rent this one and see him in a different part.
Kiddy Warning: Obviously, you have control over your own children. However, due to gritty violence I wouldn’t let my kids watch it. Also, there may or may not be a rape scene.
Want to watch it? Click here to watch it on ok.ru. And thanks "Juhi Thaker" for posting!
More Sidney Poitier movies here!