User Reviews

Based on the 1946 play of the same name by the Old Shirburnian Warren Chetham-Strode, this is a rather spiffing motion picture by a pair of Old Redingensians known as the Boulting brothers. It is jolly well written by John and the direction by his twin brother Roy is generally super but it is a bit hard to make out some of the nighttime scenes, worst luck.

The picture tells the story of a working class boy named Jack Read, played by the always cracking Richard Attenborough, attending Saintbury, a fictional public school but probably still better some real ones, eh wot? He receives a scholarship because the Fleming Report suggested that boys from different classes should attend public schools as an experiment. The other boys are absolute rotters to him when he first comes to the school, I must say. They crackle like hyenas at his accent and poor pronunciation of French and kick him in the bottom - or as he puts it, "arse," the first time that most uncouth word was used in the pictures - when he bends over to show respect to His Majesty King Henry VIII on Founder's Day. Poor old Read even considers going home but his house tutor Nigel "Lorry" Lorraine, who has lots of dangerous, radical ideas like treating people from different backgrounds equally, convinces him to show that rum lot what he is made of. With the backing and support of Lorry, good old Read eventually gets a scholarship to Cambridge, one of the two universities. Read plans to become a schoolmaster himself and I like to imagine him coming back to Saintbury after he reads history and staying that for a jolly long time like Mr. Chips.

The picture also stars Robert Flemyng, whom Attenborough would cast in his own pictures "Oh! What a Lovely War", "Young Winston" and "Shadowlands" yonks later, as Lorry and he is positively smashing in the role of a kind teacher who wants to make everything...modern and open up Saintbury to boys whose fathers don't have hereditary titles or even knighthoods. Attenborough's wife Sheila Sim stars as Lorry's girl Lynn Hartley but she and her husband only speak to each other once in the entire picture. Cecil Trouncer is perfectly spiffing as Lynn's pater Lloyd Hartley, a bit of a stinker who comes to think that Saintbury needs to move into the 20th Century. I don't see why as the 19th Century was a fine old time. Many of the other actors in the picture are tops as well such as Bernard Miles and Joan Hickson as Read's mater and pater (or "Mum" and "Dad" as he calls them), Anthony Nicholls as the very young headmaster Mr. Stringer (another blasted moderniser) and Edith Sharpe as Mrs. Hartley. The picture also features Oscar Quitak and Peter Reynolds in smaller supporting roles as Saintburians Tracey Major and Grimmett and a tiny appearance from Master Anthony Newley.

Overall, this is a jolly good show all round which makes a few cracking points about public school life and the old traditions that keep them isolated from the sort of riffraff who don't know the Royal Family personally.

Shown on television more or less 60 years after its initial release this holds up remarkably well in contrast to Brighton Rock made one year earlier with the same leading man and the other twin director brother at the helm. Perhaps it is because The Guinea Pig presents Britain in a positive rather than a negative light or, to put it another way, perhaps we can feel nostalgia for an IDEA of a lost Britain rather than an actual one. Dickie Attenborough then 23 and already married for three years (to Sheila Sim, who marries Robert Fleyming here) 'got away' with playing the working class schoolboy awarded a scholarship to a Public school as a 'socialist' experiment and part of the enjoyment is watching the traditional 'values' of that lost England reflected in the prism of the Public school as they had been in Goodbye, Mr. Chips and would be again in The Browning Version though all three films had a different focus. Today when ANY form of education is anathema to the Blairites it's difficult if a film like this would last five minutes should anyone be foolish enough to produce and screen one but as long as Channel 4 is prepared to air this type of movie we can bask in its core values for an hour or so even as the barbarians are at the gate.

"One Englishman only has to open his mouth for another Englishman to immediately despise him" said Bernard Shaw,an Irishman who,despite its faults chose to live in England for most of his life.This was never more true than in the 1940s when after two world wars and Lord knows how many revolutions,the British Working Class began,in fits and starts, to seek their place in the sun. Shaw's aphorism of course works both ways and the Cockneys,Geordies, Scousers,Mancs,Brummies,Tykes etc had a healthy contempt for the chinless wonders who considered themselves infinitely their superiors. "Scholarship Boys" had been a fact of Public School life since Billy Bunter rolled along the remove Passage at Greyfriars,but "The Guinea Pig" offers the phenomenon as if it was newly-minted. To most people Richard Attenborough will be the only member of the cast who speaks normally.The masters,their families,the other boys all employ the ridiculous strangled tones that make Noel Coward seem like Bob Hoskins. Young Master Attenborough's progress through the school is marked by the ragging,bullying and generally oppressive behaviour any "New Scum" could expect in such an establishment.The fact that he is an "oik" merely gives it extra flavour.However,he is made of stern stuff and triumphs over all adversity and is promised a "crack at University" (gulp),something that,sixty years on,every child may see as its right. The rise of the Grammar Schools ensured that Working Class children who wished to go onto Higher Education got the opportunity to do so. The fact that New Labour has done its best to destroy that institution reflects little credit on them and their small-minded and repressive educational policies. The movie is a passionate plea for equality of opportunity in education which,sadly,was not and will not be attained by tokenism. What was needed then and is even more needed now is better schools and better teaching.Apparently the government can find untold billions to bail out corrupt bankers but future generations of innocent children can go jump for a decent education.Ah well,that's Socialism for you,I guess.

An earnest, well-made story about English social change post WWII, or someone trying to fit in and succeeding.

I'm from a lower-middle-class London family and won a scholarship to a minor English public (US private) school in the late 60's, so I can identify with Jack Read, the 23-year-old Richard Attenborough skilfully playing a slightly chunky 13, who does the same just after WWII. The premise of the film is the standard fish-out-of-water shtick, where Jack arrives at a snooty boys' school founded by Henry VIII. Everybody but Jack has a plummy English accent and looks down their noses at him, and he only finds one ally in the progressive new teacher Mr. Lawrence Lorraine, one of whose legs has been shot off. I'm not sure which leg, as his limp varies. Mr. Lorraine encourages Jack to 'stick at it', despite deciding to resign himself.

The film starts to appear something of a defence of the institution and its customs, including caning, bullying and ritual humiliation. Jack's efforts to fit in and move up the class system while sticking up for himself are complementary to the downward changes that the stuffy and snobbish, but picturesque and proud school - much like Mr. Chips' Brookfield - needs to make in England's post WWII democratisation (however short-lived that was).

After about an hour, Jack's Walthamstow accent becomes distinctly RADA, and he begins to have some success with the ladies, particularly the sweet young thing Miss Beckett in the village bookshop. Meanwhile, the debate about whether money for scholarships for the underprivileged is a good or a bad thing continues. Yep, it's not exactly 'Die Hard'.

Jack's parents resolve to scrape together the £1000(!) to send Jack to Cambridge, and when they attend a school tea party, the deference of the lower class to the status quo is complete. At this point TGP loses focus and becomes a love story about Mr. Lorraine.

SPOILER: In the movie's Mr. Chips-like redemption of the uptight, miserable housemaster Mr. Hartley, the money is (possibly) found to pay for Jack to go on to do a degree and become a teacher. Those were the days.

So in the end, the guinea pig himself is altered and conforms to the system, whose faults are only of rigidity, and everyone lives happily ever after. This wasn't my experience.

Rarely seen on British television now, The Guinea Pig is an early Richard Attenborough film, where the 23 year old actor manages to convincingly play a schoolboy from ages 14 to 18, in the same way he played a teenage gangster in Brighton Rock.

The Guinea Pig is the story of a working class boy from Walthamstow, who wins a scholarship to a top public school as part of a post war experiment by the Labour government, initially has a very rough time due to his background, but gradually settles in to school life and ends up going to Cambridge.

The main reason for watching The Guinea Pig is to see how public schools operated in the less liberal era of the 1940s. Jack Read( Attenborough) is made to act as a servant for a sixth former( a practice known as fagging) and caned for burning his toast, again true to life in many public schools. Also Read is later caned for daring to see a local girl, as this is against school rules, and the whole place is hidebound by ancient rules and customs, such as bowing to a statue of the school's founder. Unsettling and bizarre, this was how many English public schools operated until they became more liberal in the 1970s.

I would say watch The Guinea Pig more as a period piece than a source of entertainment as the theme music throughout is ponderous and heavy going, some of the characterisations are hammy upper crust( I say old chap) and it is very old. However, the happy ending, when Read is accepted into Cambridge and an understanding young master falls in love, is a nice touch and the film is one of Attenborough's less well known but good roles.

In 1948, Britain was being ruled by the Labour Party with a government more socialist than any in its history with an ambition to occupy the commanding heights of the economy on behalf of the people. If it wasn't the whiff of revolution in the air, there was the prospect of change that was unwelcome to the ruling classes of the time and this film represents a timely warning to the working classes not to rock the boat. A single working class boy, Read, is taken into a top public school as an experiment. He hates it at first and endures a mild caning and a bit of ragging, but emerges as a young toff himself, set for Cambridge and a career in teaching. He doesn't challenge the system but is merged into it. There is some conflict between the masters about the need for change and including boys like Read, but the conflict is resolved in such a civilised way that the audience is left in doubt that Britain must be uniquely blessed with a ruling class of impeccable character that it would be foolish to discard. Read's father, a working class demi-hero having played football for the Army (the best team in England in wartime), endorses his son's transition to the establishment, acknowledging that this school has taught him character building lessons he could not have learnt in a state school. So, the message to the working class is: a small number of your most talented boys can join the ruling class so long as you accept its right to rule. Having said that, the film has a good script and excellent ensemble performances from a raft of Britain's better screen actors of the time, including the great Bernard Miles as the boy's father.

The Guinea Pig is about a lower middle class boy called Jack winning a scholarship and going to an English public school called Saintbury. There he is bullied by other pupils for his lower class origins and disliked by his house-master who resents any sort of change. We see him flogged by a senior pupil for burning a couple of pieces of toast and by his house-master for walking along a riverside park with a local girl. His house-master is repelled not just by his class background but by things such as his eating habits. Jack wipes out a plate with a piece of bread. We do see Jack having a meal at home and there is nothing wrong with his table manners there. As for the infamous use of the word "arse" with Jack's upbringing he probably would not have used the word in the first place. Education at this school is muscular Christian with an emphasis on sports such as "rugger" and cricket. The teachers wouldn't know what a lesson plan was. Their method of teaching in this film is is take out your book and turn to page ... and lets read around the class. The school library cannot be of much use because we see Jack make a mess of a history paper and is then told by the progressive Mr. Lorraine to go to the local bookshop and buy a specific book on the subject. The book should have been in the library in the first place or why set the assignment? After four years at this institution we find that Jack wants to go to Cambridge to read for a degree and become a teacher. Well, he could have stayed in East London; there were some excellent nearby grammar schools during the postwar years and he then could have entered the University of London. This films message is that the public schools would have to change and accommodate a Labour government. The public schools didn't really change and the Labour party never had the backbone to take them on.