It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

In one of her earliest roles young teen Diana Dors is being given a lecture by social worker Flora Robson on the evils of wilful disobedience to her parents. Flora decides to best make her point by example and she chooses to tell Diana the story of Jean Kent and her downward spiral from when she started out as a teen delinquent just like Dors.It begins innocently enough, Kent has a job in a pawnshop and she borrows some of the jewelry to wear on a date. The owner catches her and threatens to report her to the police. But he'll forget it with a quick roll in the hay. She goes home and dad whales the tar out of her. After that it's a lot of poor choices combined with being in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people.Kent does a fine job even though she's 27 years old as the troubled young post war British girl. Along the way she meets up with playboy Dennis Price, club owner Herbert Lom, hood Peter Glenville, and finally deserter American soldier Bonar Colleano who puts the final touch to a short but violent criminal career.A good ensemble cast backs Kent. But the story is about her and she's memorable in her part.

Good-Time Girl is directed by David MacDonald and collectively adapted to screenplay by Muriel Box, Sydney Box and Ted Willis from the novel Night Darkens the Street written by Arthur La Bern. It stars Jean Kent, Dennis Price, Herbert Lom, Bonar Collleano, Peter Glenville, Flora Robson and Jill Balcon. Music is by Lambert Williamson and Clifton Parker, and cinematography is by Stephen Dade. This is the story of Gwen Rawlings (Kent), a 16 year old British girl who ran away from home and met trouble around every corner she turned... The under represented genre of film dealing with juvenile female delinquency has always been a tricky subject for film makers to tackle, even more so back in the day as it were. Here in 1948 is one of the best of its kind, and this even after the BBFC enforced some tone downs of violent scenes and requested that a moral message framing device open and close the story. It's even thought that the Government of the time got involved, such is the wariness of how authority dealt with a troubled female teenager. The whole film is relentlessly bleak, even as young Gwen strides out with determination and stoic strength, her ebullience infectious, there's sadness or tragedy about to enter the fray. Her whole life spins out of control the moment she is caught returning a brooch she borrowed from the Pawn Shop where she works. She had been out dancing the night before and wanted to look smart, so she took the brooch thinking nobody would mind as long as it was put back the next day, but her boss catches her returning it and isn't as understanding as she had hoped. In fact he is prepared to turn the other cheek in return for sexual favours! To which she promptly says no and slaps him one. From this point on Gwen's life slips into a vortex of misery and disaster. After a savage beating by her father, who is incensed about her "theft" and sacking from the Pawn Shop; which is filmed skillfully by MacDonald who fades the scene to black, she runs away to start a new life, a 16 year old girl alone in the big city. She seems savvy enough, but she is quickly duped by a fellow lodger at her boardings (Glenville on wonderfully spiv oily form) and even though she lands a hat-check job at Max Vine's (Lom) nightclub, things quickly turn sour. Either by bad luck, bad judgement or just being around bad people, Gwen is on course to be wrongly sent to an Approved School, which is basically a euphemism for Girls Borstal it seems! The only bright spot in her life is Michael "Red" Farrell (Price), a genuinely kind man but one who is also married. While there at the "school" Gwen goes through metamorphism and turns into a warrior bad girl, a plot line that John Cromwell's 1950 film Caged would follow. She befriends the tough cookie "mommy" inmate, played by Daniel Day-Lewis' mom, Jill Balcon, and before you know it she is the hard nut who thinks of nothing to bullying other girls and escaping at the first chance she gets. Now she's a fully fledge escapee, a hardened hard drinker and smoker, sexually matured and venturing still further down life's dark alleyways. And worse is to come, because fate dictates that she again will fall in with the wrong people, but willingly so this time, until finally fate deals its fatal blow, a coup de grace that stuns with the bitterest of ironies. Cast are excellent, with Kent a revelation playing a girl ten years younger than her actual age. Direction is smart and brisk, while Dade's photography is always in the realm of film noir, with perpetual shadows and darkened streets, smoky clubs and depressingly foreboding institutions lighted accordingly. The message of the movie is a bit hazy, is Gwen's downfall the product of her torrid home life? A failure of the authorities to get her the help she needed? Or is it that Post War British Society had changed its outlook and was now looking after number one? Either way, Good-Time Girl is a biting bit of British noir, thrusting the female lead into a world where she is abused and used by those around her, harassed at regular intervals, and of course guided by that old devil of film noir, the vagaries of fate. 8.5/10

The 27-year-old Jean Kent plays 16-year-old Gwen in this excellent and harrowing British film that looks at the downfall of a good-time girl.Told as a cautionary tell by Flora Robson (a court officer) to Diana Dors (a possible delinquent), the story of Gwen combines parts of all those Hollywood movies starring Lana Turner or Susan Hayward in which the good girl goes bad---and PAYS for it.Gwen is a well-meaning girl who comes from a violent home and likes nice things. After a final beating from her father on being fired from a job in a pawn shop, she runs away and gets an apartment in London. There she meets a man who gets her a job in a nightclub. From then on she's on a descent into a world of booze and sleazy men. She never really does anything wrong but she crosses the wrong guy and he gets even by framing her in a jewel heist. She's sent to a reform school, learns to be really tough, and escapes to live an even wilder life of men and booze. The final sequence of events is mesmerizingly horrible as Gwen gets framed one last time.Jean Kent is terrific and totally believable as the willful teenager and party girl. She's as good as any tough girl in any Hollywood film. Supporting cast offers a few great roles here: Griffith Jones, usually a nice guy, plays a sadistic thug; Jill Balcon (mother of Daniel Day-Lewis) is great as the vicious Roberta; Herbert Lom is subdued as Maxie the nightclub owner; Beatrice Varley is good as the hapless mother; Dennis Price is memorable as Red; and Flora Robson scores again as the court official.Just a terrific little film.....

Warning: spoilers. Gwen, a teenage girl leaves a brutal home and falls into bad company. Sent to reform school she gets wised up quickly, and embarks on a criminal career.The British *do* do sordid nicely! From the heroine's slum home through to the gangland nightclubs she comes to inhabit I was given the clear impression that her world was nasty, corrupt and dangerous. Jean Kent, the actress who played Gwen, brought the part off well too. She was convincingly innocent and rebellious in the beginning; convincingly hard and amoral at the end.The plot was fast paced and the script tight. The movie never bogged down at any point, possibly because it was tightly focused on the main character. The peripheral characters were neatly sketched in. Some verged on the edge of cliche, but since they were only there to move Gwen's story along, they never quite tipped over the edge.That being said, there are parts of the movie which are hokey. The first instance which struck me was the scene where Gwen's father thrashes her with his belt - it was quite plain to me that the actor was doing his best to miss Jean Kent. The framing story which surrounds the main plot seemed unnecessary and begged the question how the narrator of Gwen's story knew all the details of her career. I suspect it was put there to point out the moral to "Good Time Girl"'s original audience. I also suspect that the movie was originally promoted with slogans such as "From Today's Headlines!"