Do you know what time of year it is!?  Well, yes — it is August and soon it will be September.  But even more importantly, it’s back to school time!  Summer is over and, all across the country, children and teenagers alike are getting ready to return to school.  Some schools in America have already opened.  In my part of Texas, school is officially starting on August 25th.  So, what better time than now for the Shattered Lens to go back to school?  Over the next 8 days, we’ll be taking a chronological look at 76 films about teenagers and high school.

And what better film to start with than the low-budget 1944 look at juvenile delinquency, I Accuse My Parents?  Well, technically, there’s probably a lot of better films that I could start with but, to be honest, I just love this film’s title.  I Accuse My Parents.  It’s just so melodramatic and over the top, much like this film itself.  And yet, the title also carries a hint of the truth.  After all, who hasn’t accused their parents at one point in their life?

I Accuse My Parents opens with Jimmy Wilson (Robert Lowell) standing in a courtroom and being addressed by a stern-sounding judge.  Despite the fact that Jimmy appears to be in his early 30s, the film continually assures us that he’s a teenager.  He’s been accused of manslaughter and, as the judge tells us, he has apparently failed to provide any help to his defense lawyers.  Does Jimmy have anything to say in his defense?  Jimmy looks down at the floor, obviously deep in thought.  Finally, he looks up and says, “I accuse my parents.”

“OH MY GOD!” everyone in the courtroom says in unison.  Or, at least, they would have if this film hadn’t been made in 1944.  Instead, they simply gasp in shock.

It’s flashback time!  We see that before Jimmy became a murderous criminal, he was just your normal 30 year-old high school student.  He even won an award for writing an essay about how wonderful his parents were.  Little did his fellow students suspect that Jimmy’s mom was actually a drunk and his father was more concerned with business than with raising his son.  When Jimmy’s mom showed up at the school drunk, all of Jimmy’s friends saw her and laughed.  Jimmy’s essay of lies had been exposed!

Even worse, when Jimmy got an after-school job as a shoe salesman, he met and fell in love singer Kitty Reed (Mary Beth Hughes).  Little did Jimmy suspect that Kitty was also the mistress of gangster Charles Blake (George Meeker).  Blake recruited Jimmy to start delivering stolen goods.  Unfortunately, award-winning essay aside, Jimmy was a bit of an idiot and never realized, until it was too late, that he was being drawn into a life of crime.  Even worse, his father was too busy working and his mother was too busy drinking to see what their son was getting involved with.

I have a soft spot in my heart for films like I Accuse My Parents.  These films take place in a world where the worst thing that can happen will always happen.  Being neglected by his parents doesn’t just leave Jimmy feeling angry or resentful.  Instead, it leads to him meeting a gangster and becoming a criminal.  And while most of the on-screen evidence would suggest that Jimmy’s main problem is that he’s a little bit stupid (and that would certainly explain why, despite clearly being in his 30s, Jimmy is still a senior in high school), the film wants to make it very clear that all of this could have been avoided if only he had better parents.

Add to that, it’s interesting to see that, even in the 1940s, it wasn’t easy being a teenager!

Finally, it should be noted that the film ends with a note letting us know that the producers had shipped copies of the film off to our fighting forces in Europe, which I think was sweet of them.  (Though I have a feeling that the soldiers might have preferred something featuring Lana Turner…)

Feel free to watch I Accuse My Parents below.

Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2b-H4Y8190