By and large, I usually have issues with Hollywood social commentary films. I know that many of them are born of sincere intentions, but they usually collapse under poor execution, hammy performances, and clunky moralizing. Richard Brooks' Blackboard Jungle, on the other hand, is everything that a social commentary film should be: bold, brash, honest, and devastating. A film about a teacher named Richard Dadier (Glenn Ford) at a tumultuous inner-city school, Blackboard Jungle is a powerful condemnation of racism. But what separates the film from other Hollywood anti-racist diatribes is its refusal to view systematic racism from only one angle. The vitriolic racism demonstrated by the students towards each other is condemned, but the film's harshest words are for the white school teachers and administrators who doom their students by neglecting them and refusing to take them seriously. Perhaps the most incredible moment of the film is when Dadier furiously argues with Gregory Miller, a black student played by a young Sidney Poitier. In a moment of anger, Dadier almost calls Miller a slur. Miller pounces on the opportunity, goading Dadier to say it, to hit him. And in that millisecond, Dadier realizes that he has become the very evil that he has tried to fight against. One of the film's most fascinating dynamics concerns Dadier's slow realization that the student ringleader, the one responsible for their destructive behavior, isn't Miller, but a white student. A regular film would have simply seen Dadier come to terms with his own prejudice against Miller. But Blackboard Jungle goes one step farther and condemns the system which made Dadier blind to the true criminal perpetrator in his midst. The film is also aided by Russell Harlan's expert cinematography, Brooks' ability to choreograph large groups of actors simultaneously, Ford and Poitier's earth-shattering performances, and a ruthlessly honest and tight screenplay.
9/10
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