DeMille returns to the high school milieu of The Godless Girl when that institution was still so fresh on the mass culture landscape that any examination of it felt ultra-contemporary and important. Temporarily empowered with law-enforcement authority in a Boys Week gambit, the valedictorians of North High School embark on a vigilante crusade to rid the city of the gangsterism that the adults and their due process niceties can’t quash. Though nominally one of DeMille’s modern stories, the boys’ solutions have a decidedly Old Testament flavor, not least extracting information from one hood by dangling him over a pit of live rats. Simultaneously awestruck by fascist methodology and solidly anti-bigotry (the boys’ crusade is set in motion by the murder of a Jewish tailor), This Day and Age is civic-minded in a one-of-a-kind way. (Kyle Westphal)