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Tuesday, May 13, 2008

THE BLACKBOARD JUNGLE (1955)

What passed for honesty in writer/director Richard Brooks ’ work was more like labored stiffness. He trampled over subjects from Tennessee Williams to Dostoevsky, though his Burt Lancaster films, ELMER GANTRY and THE PROFESSIONALS, hold up. In this famous high school delinquency drama (it’s the one with "Rock Around the Clock" over the credits), he’s as crude as ever. At 31, Sidney Poitier makes for a mature senior, but he easily steals the film from a pack of up & coming classmates (including Vic Morrow & Paul Masursky) and star Glenn Ford whose film wife, Anne Francis, looks like one of his students at 25.

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