Lord Jeff

Geoffrey, raised by a couple who look wealthy and live by fraud, is caught in a hotel robbery and sent to a naval boarding school. The boy thinks himself superior, keeps everyone at a distance and plans to run. His roommate Terry will not let go of him. The film is not interested in crime. It is interested in learning to belong: Geoffrey has been performing all his life and at the school has to be himself for the first time. Its resolution is not a punishment but someone trusting him. The form is MGM family film: uniforms, shipboard training, naval rules and a tidy moral path. The school scenes are built on the routine of real British naval schools. Sam Wood directed. The studio was pairing its child stars constantly in this period, and this film brings Freddie Bartholomew and Mickey Rooney together again; their contrast, the polite English boy and the American with street sense, carries all the humour. Charles Coburn plays the head of the school. Who it is for: viewers who like thirties studio children's films and Rooney. Who it is not for: anyone expecting complexity. The moral is stated outright, the change is quick and the ending is far too neat.