Laurence Miller

Juvenile delinquency cases in the United States multiplied after World War II. In spite of growing public interest and alarm, the motion picture industry tended to avoid the subject. Even the genre of film noir (1940-1959), with its emphasis on danger and corruption, largely ignored depicting the criminal life of young people. Yet Laurence Miller argues that the few film noir depictions of juvenile delinquency are worth attention because they were the first to attempt a realistic representation of delinquent subcultures. These early films paved the way for the more famous juvenile delinquency films of the 1950s, such as The Wild One (1953), The Blackboard Jungle (1955), and Rebel Without a Cause (1955). In the article below, Miller discusses this "golden age" of delinquency films and analyzes the influential contributions of its film noir predecessors.

Much...