Blackboard Jungle (1955)

So, I watched Detachment a week ago, a film about a not particularly healthy school system. Richard Brooks' Blackboard Jungle (dir. Evan Hunter) is a superior film (its not fantastic, but its not terrible - but its DATED) about a similar theme. The main character is a youngish teacher who lands a job at a school with a bad reputation and we all expect him to turn the rowdy kids into art-appreciating saints. These kids are their teachers' worst nightmare: they belong to gangs, they beat their teacher up, they break a teacher's jazz records (rarities!) and though the new-comer tries to make the best out of the situation, but most of the time he has a scared and desperate look on his face (when he goes to a bar with his colleague and the colleague wants them to have another drink, the newbie dryly asks whether many teachers end up as alcoholics). Sadly, the film seems to go nowhere. It self-importantly reports the crimes and misbehavior of the young hoodlums, trying to elicit reactions from the viewer: how horrible, horrible! An interesting aspect of the movie is its treatment of race. The students come from different backgrounds and the teacher explicitly states that he is no racist. Hunter's agenda seems to be to denounce certain racist ideas about social problems: the big problems seem to be --- oh well, it's not very clear. That the parents were not around when the kids were small, perhaps due to the war? Maybe. But Hunters focuses more on the problems than the solutions. The classroom is a place of assault, protest and violence. The film seems to long for discipline, tranquility and harmony, but it's not sure how that could be achieved. And maybe that's the merit of the film that it abstains from scratching out a blueprint for how social problems are to be dealt with. There are moments of respite, moments of connection between students and the new teacher, but this is only temporary. Most scenes opt for melodrama rather than social critique (even though I really felt for that teacher who got his records destroyed....) and perhaps there are too many copies of Marlon Brando tough guys in there. Blackboard Jungle is not overly "inspirational", it tries to be rough and edgy - but what does it want to say? .... And yeah, this is the film in which Bill Haley's "Rock around the clock" was used - I must say I am not really convinced that this song conveys the toughness it was perhaps meant to give you an immediate feeling for. Perhaps the contemporary audiences opined differently.