Blackboard Jungle (1955)

(Richard Brooks, US 1955, 101 min., 16mm)

Still rowdy after all these years, Richard Brooks’s raucous drama about a war vet-turned-teacher (Glenn Ford) who fights a new kind of battle in the classroom opens with a blast — specifically, “Rock Around the Clock” — and never lets up. A key film of the 1950s, Jungle established the rebellious youth genre, ushered rock and roll into the mainstream, and caused theater riots here and abroad. The amazing cast of juvenile delinquents who make Ford’s life a living hell includes Vic Morrow, Sidney Poitier, Paul Mazursky, and Jameel Farah, aka M*A*S*H’s Jamie Farr. Poitier would, twelve years later, change to the role of teacher for the similarly themed To Sir, With Love.