Boys in Brown

Boys in Brown is a British juvenile delinquency film from 1949, courtesy of Gainsborough and directed by Montgomery Tully.

Dirk Bogarde had made maybe 10 films - he would become noticed in his next film, The Blue Lamp.

At any rate, the star is Dickie Attenborough, with Jack Warner running the Borstal Institution, where boys who commit crimes are sent. As shown in another film, Good-Time Girl from 1948, these places apparently were under heavy criticism in England.

It's post-war. Jackie Knowles (Attenborough) is on probation for committing petty crimes. Needing money, he agrees to be the getaway driver for a jewel robbery. He's arrested and sentenced to three years in a Borstal Institution, which has the goal of rehabilitation.

Jackie has the best of intentions but is led astray by some boys planning an escape, including the manipulative Alfie (Bogarde). Knowing Jackie has a girlfriend, Kitty, he tells him that Kitty has forgotten about him and is seeing someone else. Jackie agrees to go along with the group. Trouble ensues.

Like Good-Time Girl, these kids haven't been reformed sufficiently. It was fun to see these young actors, who would come up through Rank Studios, particularly Attenborough, Bogarde, Alfie Bass, Michael Medwin, Robert Desmond, and Jimmy Hanley.

Someone pointed out that although there were appropriately aged actors for these roles, Rank used their actors who were too old for the roles, i.e., well into their twenties. They were still being trained for the most part.

Nice to hear Bogarde doing Julius Cesar.

Amazon notwithstanding, a DVD of this is available and I recently ran across it. The story is pretty basic and not very believable but you do learn quite a bit about the time in which it happens. Unlike the US where kids were already defining their own style of dress, their own music and gathering places devoid of adults, the British kids dress like miniature adults with clean white shirt, tie and dark sport coat....even when robbing stores! You get the feeling that success for them means getting what the adults already have rather than renouncing the world of their elders. And they are comfortable hitting a pub for a drink. It's no big deal. I guess the British drinking age is a bit lower than that in the US. But while the British world might have welcomed the youngsters into the fold, the British film industry took things to a ridiculous extreme; all the borstal "kids" are old enough to be guards themselves. Check the biogs of the actors. Several of them are in their 30's, playing teens. Hanley, playing the part of Bill Foster, is 32 and sports an enormous belly. He is almost old enough to have a son of his own in a borstal. Attenborough and Bogard are a little less obvious, but not much. Apparently Rank, like American International and Roger Corman, had difficulty finding suitable juvenile actors and simply used adults dressed as kids. After a while you get used to it since the teens act like little adults anyway. Actually a rather interesting picture from a historical aspect. If you can find it.

If you've ever wanted to see Dirk Bogarde in shorts then this is the film for you!! (Today's generation of young offenders would probably regard being made to wear short trousers cruel & unusual punishment in itself; and I still haven't decided yet who looks more grotesque in shorts, Alfie Bass in this or Roman Polanski in 'A Generation'!)

One of the final gasps, incredibly enough, of Gainsborough Pictures; and based, even more incredibly, on a play by Reginald Beckwith, 'Boys in Brown' is yet another stern warning to the youth of postwar austerity Britain to stick to the straight and narrow or face severe consequences.

Three of the cast were promptly reunited in 'The Blue Lamp'; Jack Warner & Jimmy Hanley as coppers, Bogarde as the zoot-suited spiv taught an even harsher lesson that crime is a mug's game.

Richard Attenborough is the naive young "Jackie", in love with his girl "Kitty" (Barbara Murray) but prone to getting into bad company. It is after one such escapade that he finds himself sentenced to three years in borstal. Fortunately for him, the governor (Jack Warden) believes firmly that the purpose of these institutions is to rehabilitate and so he is inclined to try and help the man; unfortunately his habit of falling for the wrong 'uns continues as he soon becomes the quarry of the duplicitous "Rawlins" (Dirk Bogarde) and his gang of would-be escapees. The film follows the path he takes to try and escape, not just from his incarceration, but from the self-perpetuating cycle of scenarios that make it impossible for him to break free and make a clean start with his life and his love. It sags a bit, this, but overall the performances are convincing and it does evoke a sense of just how despairing times must have been for many in the immediate aftermath of WWII. Jimmy Handley chips in well as another of "Rawlins" pawns, also do Thora Hird, Alfie Bass and Michael Medwin, too. There is a little too much dialogue but it is still worth a watch.

Most of this film is set at a reform school for young offenders. I had to laugh at this because most of the actors are in their late 20s and some look well over 30! So the word 'Boys' in the title seems hardly appropriate!

Jackie Knowles (Richard Attenborough) is a young punk who has already been arrested for some petty crime. He didn't learn his lesson and soon is arrested again and is sent to the reform school. Jackie seems like he's not too bad a sort and he decides to apply himself, do his time and make something of himself. Unfortunately, there are a lot of guys who are more than happy to keep Jackie down...particularly the rat- like Alfie (Dirk Bogarde). When a group of the 'boys' want to escape, Alfie insists that he'll make Jackie join them....even if it means lying and manipulating to get his cooperation.

Overall, this is a reasonably well made and entertaining film which emphasizes humane treatment and reform. In many ways, it's a bit like some of the early Dead End Kids films in this respect. Worth seeing mostly so you can see Bogarde and Attenborough as they both were fine actors even when they were 'boys'!