Blackboard Jungle

Blackboard Jungle

Otto Preminger expanded his vision in the 1960s with a whole series of ambitious, expansive dramas with huge casts and big themes. Advise and Consent (1962), an examination of deal making, party politics, and congressional diplomacy in Washington's legislative halls (based on the novel by Allen Drury), is one of his best. Preminger broke the blacklist with his previous film, Exodus, and it rings through in this drama about a controversial nominee for secretary of state (a confident, stately Henry Fonda) accused of being a Communist. The nomination process becomes the center ring of the political circus, with fidgety accuser Burgess Meredith in the spotlight; devious, silver-tongued Charles Laughton cracking the whip as a southern senator with a grudge against Fonda; and party whip Walter Pidgeon lining up votes behind the scenes. Arm twisting and diplomatic hardball turns to perjury and blackmail, and a melodramatic twist gives this lesson in party politics a salacious soap opera dimension. With The Americanization of Emily (1964), screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky (Marty) sinks his satirical fangs into a story of an American naval officer (James Garner) selected to be the first victim at the invasion of Normandy. Julie Andrews plays a prim, British war widow who falls for him. Cynical in tone, the story becomes an interesting collision of manipulative interests and renewed life, the same formula that worked so well in Chayefsky's scripts for Network and Hospital. One of the first Hollywood films to deal openly with white racism toward Japanese Americans during World War II, Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) (directed by action maestro John Sturges, The Great Escape) stars Spencer Tracy as a one-armed stranger named MacReedy, who arrives in the tiny town of Black Rock on a hot day in 1945. Seeking a hotel room and the whereabouts of an ethnic Japanese farmer named Komoko, MacReedy runs smack into a wall of hostility that escalates into serious threats. In time it becomes apparent that Komoko has been murdered by a local, racist chieftain, Reno Smith (Robert Ryan), who also plans on dispensing with MacReedy. Tracy's hero is forced to fight his way past Smith's goons (among them Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin) and sundry allies (Anne Francis) to keep alive, setting the stage for memorable suspense crisply orchestrated by Sturges. Casting is the film's principal strength, however: Tracy, the indispensable icon of integrity, and Ryan, the indispensable noir image of spiritual blight, are as creatively unlikely a pairing as Sturges's shotgun marriage of Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen in The Magnificent Seven. Novelist Evan Hunter burst America's postwar bubble when he described an inner-city school terrorized by switchblade-wielding juvenile delinquents. Director-screenwriter Richard Brooks's 1955 adaptation of Blackboard Jungle still packs a tremendous wallop (even if it was shot mostly on the back lot). A forerunner of Rebel Without a Cause and West Side Story, this black-and-white classic--set to Bill Haley and His Comets' "Rock Around the Clock"--is part exposé, part melodrama, part public-service announcement. Glenn Ford, at his slow-to-rile best, plays Richard Dadier, an incoming English teacher at North Manual High School. An idealist who knows how to handle himself in a dark alley, Dadier stands his ground and earns the begrudging respect of school thugs led by Vic Morrow and Sidney Poitier. Anne Francis plays Ford's especially vulnerable wife; Richard Kiley is the timid math teacher with the priceless jazz-record collection; Louis Calhern and John Hoyt are among the more cynical North Manual High veterans. See if you can ID Jamie Farr and director Paul Mazursky as gang members. The film was nominated for four Oscars. More timely now, perhaps, than when it was first released in 1957, Elia Kazan's overheated political melodrama Face in the Crowd explores the dangerous manipulative power of pop culture. It exposes the underside of Capra-corn populism, as exemplified in the optimistic fable of grassroots punditry Meet John Doe. In Kazan's account, scripted by Budd Schulberg, the common-man pontificator (Andy Griffith) is no Gary Cooper-style aw-shucks paragon. Promoted to national fame as a folksy TV idol by radio producer Patricia Neal, Griffith's Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes turns out to be a megalomaniacal rat bastard. The film turns apocalyptic as Rhodes exploits his power to sway the masses, helping to elect a reactionary presidential candidate. The parodies of television commercials and opinion polling were cutting edge in their day (Face in the Crowd was the Network of the Eisenhower era), and there are some startling, near-documentary sequences shot on location in Arkansas. An extraordinary supporting cast (led by Walter Matthau and Lee Remick) helps keep the energy level high, even when the satire turns shrill and unpersuasive in the final reel. Fury is tough stuff from director Fritz Lang (M), making his first American film with this 1936 story of an innocent man (Spencer Tracy) who escapes a lynch mob and then orchestrates his apparent murder at their hands. Tracy is superb, and the film is uncompromising, until studio interference takes some of the wind out of Lang's sails right at the end. But as the portrait of a character who comes to reflect the destiny he is trying to avoid, this is still essential Lang and a pre-noir classic. I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932) is one of the toughest and most uncompromising movies to ever come out of Hollywood. Paul Muni stars as a regular Joe, just back from World War I, who is unjustly convicted of a crime and sentenced to 10 years of bruisingly unfair treatment on a chain gang. Even a successful escape can't shake the spectre of the chains, nor the amazingly fatalistic twists the screenplay has in store. This picture could only have been made at Warner Bros., where social-justice movies flourished in the 1930s and criticism of judicial systems and prisons was sanctioned. Muni's weird acting style (he was recently off Scarface) somehow fits the film's furious tone, and director Mervyn LeRoy--as in his earlier Little Caesar--was dexterous enough to build the action to an unforgettable ending. It's a film that filters the American Dream through Depression realities and noirish pessimism (with a streak of pre-Code sexual frankness--note the one-night "friend" Muni makes the night of his escape). This one holds up, folks; it's a stunner.

NR (Not Rated)
Year:
1955
101
1,469 Views
The sensational novel...now on the screen!
Is The Most Startling Picture Of The Year!
A shock story of today's high school hoodlums!

Richard Dadier:
[catches some kids smoking in the restroom] What is this? The officers' club or something? I don't wanna catch you smoking in here again, you understand? Now get out! Come on, you heard what I said. Get out!

[3 kids leave, 2 remain]

Richard Dadier:
What's the matter? You two guys privileged or something?

Gregory W. Miller:
We only just got here, chief.

Richard Dadier:
You did huh? Well, now just get out.

Gregory W. Miller:
Can't a man wash his hands, chief?

Richard Dadier:
Wash them and get out.

Gregory W. Miller:
Sure, chief. You gonna watch me?

Emmanuel Stoker:
Maybe he'd like to wash them for us.

Richard Dadier:
What's your name? You, I'm talking to you!

Emmanuel Stoker:
Me?

Richard Dadier:
Yes, you!

Emmanuel Stoker:
Emmanuel.

Richard Dadier:
Emmanuel what?

Gregory W. Miller:
Emmanuel Trades. Don't you know, man? This boy here got the school named after him.

Richard Dadier:
What's your name, wise guy?

Gregory W. Miller:
Me? Miller. Gregory Miller. You want me to spell it out for you so you won't forget it?

Richard Dadier:
You don't have to do that. I'll remember, Miller.

Gregory W. Miller:
Sure, chief. You do that.

Richard Dadier:
Or maybe you would like to take a walk down to the principal's office with me right now. Is that what you want?

Gregory W. Miller:
You're holding all the cards, chief. You wanna take me to see Mr. Warneke, you'll do just that.

Richard Dadier:
Who's your home-period teacher?

Gregory W. Miller:
You are, chief.

Richard Dadier:
Well, why aren't you with the rest of the class?

Gregory W. Miller:
Already told you. Came in to wash up, chief.

Richard Dadier:
All right, then wash up. Just cut out that "chief" routine, understand?

Gregory W. Miller:
Sure, "chief". That's what I been doing all the time. Okay for us to drift now, "chief"?

Richard Dadier:
Now, pretty soon, you're gonna be reading in the newspapers want ads for jobs, apartments, something to buy. Advertising space is expensive so abbreviations are used. Now, write out the complete words to all the abbreviations in these problem ads. All right, get started.

[Dadier notices Belazi coping answers from Morales paper]

Richard Dadier:
Belazi. Let's keep your eyes on your paper.

Belazi:
Me?

Richard Dadier:
Cheating won't help you learn those abbreviations, you know.

Artie West:
He won't look for no job. His old man owns a store.

Belazi:
Yeah, and I'm not gonna buy me me no Cadillac either.

Artie West:
No, It's cheaper to steal one. That's arithmetic for ya, teach.

Richard Dadier:
All right, Belazi. Bring me your paper up here.

[Belazi gets up and hands over his paper to Dadier]

Belazi:
Five points off. What for?

Richard Dadier:
For having loose eyes. [notices that West is cheating also] West!

Artie West:
You talking to me, teach?

Richard Dadier:
Bring your paper up here West.

Artie West:
What for?

Richard Dadier:
I said bring your paper up here.

Artie West:
And I said , what for?

Gregory W. Miller:
Come on, Artie. Bring him the paper.

Artie West:
Now, look, you keep your rotten mouth out of this, black boy.

[Miller stands up ready to pounce on West]

Richard Dadier:
Miller!... Hold it... All right. All right, Miller. It's all right. Now, bring your paper up here, West.

[West crumbles the paper and throws it on the floor]

Richard Dadier:
All right, we're going down to see the principal.

Artie West:
We are? You gonna make me, Daddy-O? How'd you like to go to hell?

Belazi:
What's the matter, Daddy-O?

Artie West:
Yeah, how about it, teach? You got a big mouth. Tell me to do this, do that. Are you big enough to take me to the principal's office? Because that's what you're gonna have to do. Take me. So, come on! Take me! Come on!

[Dadier approaches West and West pulls out a switchblade. This stops Dadier in his tracks and the rest of the class gets up and out of the way]

Artie West:
Come on. For a bright boy, you didn't learn nothing. Well, take me down. Come on. Step right up and taste a little of this , Daddy-O.

Richard Dadier:
Give me that knife, West.

Artie West:
Where do you want it? You want it in the belly? Or how about in the face, huh? Here it is. All you gotta do is take it. Come on, take it! Come on!

Gregory W. Miller:
Take it easy, chief. He's crazy, he's high, he's floating on Sneaky Pete wine.

Pete V. Morales:
He's gonna kill him.

Pete V. Morales:
[talking into a recorder in front of the class] I get up at 7:30, go wash. But my stinking sister, she's still in the bathroom, so I can't get in.

Richard Dadier:
That's fine, boy. keep on talking.

Pete V. Morales:
So then I go to the stinking bathroom. I wash my stinking face. Then I eat some stinking sausages.

Artie West:
Louder, come on!

Emmanuel Stoker:
We can't hear you in the balcony.

Pete V. Morales:
So then I go down the stinking street with my stinking books, and then I meet this stink-face who lives near me. And he says: "You go to school, Pete?" I say, "You stinking right, boy!" So we walked to the stinking El, and wait for the stinking train. What do you think? The stinking train is late. So I gotta get into the stinking crowd. And that's why I'm stinking late to school, teach. How was I? Okay?

De Lica:
You sure stunk up that record, boy!

[whole class applauds and laughs]

Richard Dadier:
That'll be enough for the day.

Artie West:
You gonna play it?

Richard Dadier:
No. Thanks for picking Morales. I'm sure you're his "friend".

Gregory W. Miller:
Sure enough, chief. Too bad you can't say the same.

Richard Dadier:
And just what does that mean?

Artie West:
Morales is a spic, that's what it means. Maybe you don't like spics.

Richard Dadier:
That will be enough of that, West.

Pete V. Morales:
What did I do, anyhow?

Artie West:
All right, sit down... spic.

Belazi:
You heard him, greaseball.

Pete V. Morales:
At least I'm no Irish Mick!

[Belazi throws a magazine at Morales]

Richard Dadier:
I said, that will be enough! Now, you pick up that magazine, Belazi. Pick it up! I wanna get one thing very clear in this classroom.There's not gonna be any name calling here. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. Now you understand that? All of ya!

Pete V. Morales:
I was just kidding.

Richard Dadier:
Yeah, I know you're just kidding. That's how things start. Like a street fight. Somebody pushes somebody in fun. Somebody pushes back, and soon you got a street fight with no kidding. That's the same way with name-calling. All right, West, look. You're of Irish descent. So is Murphy over there. You call him a Mick. He calls you a Mick. Suppose Miller called you a Mick. Is that all right? Then you call him a n*gger.

Pete V. Morales:
I was just kidding.

Richard Dadier:
Well, stop kidding!

Artie West:
Sure, sure. Come on, Morales. Tell me all about your stinking sister!

[whole class laughs and the bell rings]


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