What About Juvenile Delinquency? (1955)

by Centron Productions
Publication date 1955
Usage Public Domain
Topics Juvenile delinquency, Social guidance, Crime and criminals

https://archive.org/details/WhatAbou1955

Jim leaves the gang after it attacks his father, and joins other teenagers at City Hall to argue against the imposition of a curfew. Drama filmed in Lawrence, Kansas.ShotlistJIMMY LEAVES GANG WHEN HE FINDS OUT IT WAS HIS FATHER WHO WAS MAULED IN CAR-BUMPING INCIDENT BY TEEN-AGE GANG. DESPITE THREATS FROM GANG MEMBERS, HE JOINS OTHER STUDENTS WHO GO TO CITY HALL TO DISCUSS PROPOSED CURFEW WITH CITY COUNCIL. FILMED IN LAWRENCE, KANSAS.

This moral tale looks into teen transgression on a local level and shows a community’s effort to come to terms with the problem. A tough, sneering gang roughs up an adult who happens to be the father of Jimmy, a gang member not involved in the beating. Although the gang threatens Jimmy, he goes to City Hall with some other high-school students so that their voice can be heard as part of the debate about a proposed curfew for teens. Like the other “Discussion Problems in Group Living” films, this one ends without resolution and a challenge to the audience: “What would you do?”Although the film is perhaps too well-intentioned to be credible, its sincerity and openness make it stand out from so many other melodramatic and theatricalized depictions of juvenile delinquency. It also positions delinquency as a local issue about which people can and should talk and act, rather than as a recurring generational issue without a cure.

Ken Smith sez: A jazzy soundtrack plays as a gang of punks rough up a bald guy in a Buick. It turns out the guy is the dad of “Jamie,” one of the members of the gang. Jamie gets mad, rips his lightning-bolt insignia off his jacket, and joins forces with the “good kids.” The punks race after them in an exciting (for an instructional film) chase sequence over stock music you’ll recognize from the old Superman series. They all end up at a town council meeting where the good teens tell the adults “Teenagers aren’t all delinquents,” and complain that they’re being treated “as if we’re a bunch of freaks or something.” The film ends as the narrator asks, “What would you do?” This production reduces a complex social problem to a narrative melodrama, but at least it’s quick-paced. Possibly remade in 1959.

#crime #juvenile #delinquency #teenagers #gangs