The Guinea Pig (film)

Plot

The "guinea pig" is 14-year-old Jack Read (played by 25-year-old Richard Attenborough), a tobacconist's son who, following the Fleming Report, is given a scholarship to Saintbury, an exclusive public school.

Only after the changes wreaked by the Second World War, could such a scenario be imagined. Of course, Read's uncouth behaviour causes him difficulties in fitting into the school.

Cast

Production and reception

The film was from Pilgrim Pictures a new company set up by Filippo Del Guicide. It was financed by a "mystery industrialist".

The school location used in the film was Sherborne, a public school in Dorset. The film was controversial at the time of its first release, as it contains the first screen use of the word "arse".

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". British trade papers called the film a "notable box office attraction" in British cinemas in 1949. A reviewer for Time Out has called it, "solid entertainment, even if barely convincing".