The "guinea pig" is 14-year-old Jack Read (played by the 25-year-old Richard Attenborough), a tobacconist's son who, following the Fleming Report, is given a scholarship to Saintbury, an exclusive public school. Read's uncouth behaviour causes him difficulties in fitting into the school.
The film was controversial at the time of its first release, as it contains the first screen use of the word "arse".[8]
The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther, at the time of the film's first American release, was unimpressed. According to Crowther, "the details are highly parochial, the attitudes of the characters are strangely stiff, the accents and idioms are hard to fathom—and the exposition is involved and tedious".[9]
British trade papers called the film a "notable box office attraction" in British cinemas in 1949.[10] As of 1 April 1950 the film earned distributor's gross receipts of £173,052 in the UK of which £121,824 went to the producer.[1]
A reviewer for Time Out has called it, "solid entertainment, even if barely convincing".[11]
References
^ abChapman, J. (2022). The Money Behind the Screen: A History of British Film Finance, 1945-1985. Edinburgh University Press p 355.
^Vincent Porter, 'The Robert Clark Account', Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Vol 20 No 4, 2000 p. 487
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