The Guinea Pig - sometimes the old ones are simply the best. I don’t usually review films but felt to compelled to share this one. It really touched me.

Starring Richard Attenborough as Jack Read. His Mum Mrs Read is played by a very young Joan Hickson many may recognise as Miss Marple from more recent TV adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Murder Mysteries.

I grew up on movies like the Winslow Boy and Good Bye Mr Chips, both staring Robert Donat, Tom Browns School Days, The Happiest Days of Your Life and The Browning Version, all classic black and white films along the same lines, exploring the trials and tribulations of English public school life and often tackling difficult themes of privilege and class distinction and the exclusion of working kids from top university’s like Oxford and Cambridge.

And my love of books began as early as 6 or 7 tucking into the St Clare’s series by Enid Blyton featuring lead girls the O’Sullivan twins and subsequently Mallory Towers and protagonist Darrell Rivers said to be based on the school adventures of Blyton’s own daughter. So have always found excitement and dread in equal measure in the concept of leaving home at an early age to attend school.

The Guinea Pig is a film I’d never heard of. The Guinea Pig (US title The Outsider) It’s a 1948 British film directed by Roy Boulting and starring Richard Attenborough, in the lead role as Jack Read, Sheila Sim as Lynne Hartley, (daughter to the schools House Master Lord and Mrs Hartley and Bernard Miles as Jack’s grocer father Mr. Read.

The main plot line is one of prejudice and class, where the board of governors at the school decide on an experiment to give a working class boy the opportunity to experience life there and the advantages that may bring, against the better judgement of Lord Hartley who believes the money would be better spent on improvement to the schools 16th century building and facilities at Saintbury.

It’s a beautiful old fashioned British classic I can’t wait to see again. So good I can’t believe I’d never heard of it, the type of John Mills movie like Great Expectations or Hobson’s Choice you’d never forget and want to have in the archive when you feel like 2 hours of recalibration and remembering what’s important in life.

When Jack Read arrives he is open and a good lad who has no idea what to expect or the structure and protocol of the school and what is expected of the younger boys from the seniors.

There are moments of comedy as he speaks up for himself and gets into fights. When he meets new master Nigel Lorraine played by Robert Flemying who befriends him (as two new boys) things get a little better with his friendship and guidance but it does get to the point where Jack Read wants to leave the school and decides to make a runaway in the middle of the night.

There are some hilarious timeless lines where Jack calls Peck the school porter Sir as an elder out of respect and Peck has to explain the role reversal where Peck calls Jack, Sir. And where Jack is ribbed for his terrible French accent as he is asked to read aloud in class for the first time or his misuse of “quad” in his Latin translation, for anyone who went through the pain of The Aeneid and The Iliad. And the roastings and the beatings of school life when you are the Outsider, perhaps why this title was preferred for an American audience.

The love interest happens for Jack with “Plum Tart” a local girl at the library much to the horror of his teacher who explains he has to be reported to the Headmaster or take a beating. Jack bravely elects the later. It’s a scary reminder of life in the 40s and 50s when corporal punishment in schools was the norm and takes us back to old public school days when even speaking to the opposite sex was strictly forbidden and how strange that concept is for a boy from a normal working class family.

When Jack decides to runaway from school he interrupts Nigel Lorraine the new master and Lynne Hartley having a walk in the school grounds and kindling their romance. It is Nigel (Laurie) again who with kindness helps Jack to see things differently and not to quit.

I don’t want to tell what happens in the end. It is a little corny and somewhat predictable but the deep message in the film as minds are changed will prick a tear for many followed by the comfort of a wry smile. The film does what it means to. A lovely story if not a little predictable does give us all an education into human connection and how we all have something to learn from each other regardless of wealth, education, class or social standing in society.