The Guinea Pig Blu-ray

The British Film Institute has detailed its upcoming Blu-ray release of Roy Boulting's film The Guinea Pig (1948), starring Richard Attenborough, Sheila Sim, and Bernard Miles. The release will be available for purchase on July 20.

Synopsis: This ground-breaking drama of youth and social change from the Boulting brothers, starring Richard Attenborough with fine supporting performances from Sheila Sim (A Canterbury Tale) and Bernard Miles (In Which We Serve), retains all of its thought-provoking power. It is presented by the BFI on Blu-ray and DVD for the very first time. Complementary extras include a films about British education as seen on screen across nearly 90 years in the 20th century and films about the ration-book world of the early 1940s.

Working-class schoolboy Jack Read (Richard Attenborough, Brighton Rock) is given the chance to swap life in a Walthamstow tobacconist's shop for the ivy-clad academia of Saintbury School as part of an experiment in less class-conscious education. Read struggles to adjust to the world of the public school, rife with snobbery, corporal punishment and conformity. Can he overcome his background, as well as the prejudices of masters and schoolmates, to emerge triumphant?

Special Features and Technical Specs:

• NEWLY REMASTERED BY THE BFI
• Old School (1901-1987, 71 mins): learn all about British education as seen on screen – from Edwardian Board school parades to 1980s comprehensive kids getting to grips with GCSEs – with a century-spanning selection of rare documentary films from the BFI National Archive
• The Make-Do-And-Menders (1941-1945, 24 mins): recall the ration-book world that provided the real-life social background for The Guinea Pig in this eccentric assortment of archive oddities from the war years
• Image gallery
• First pressing only: Illustrated booklet with new essays by John Oliver and Corinna Reicher, notes on the extras and full credits