Annie's Rebel Without a Cause comparison for Nobody Waved Goodbye is accurate. I'd actually go with Blackboard Jungle. Although: both of those American JD movies, while done nearly 10 years earlier than 1964's Nobody Waved Goodbye, deal with starker and racier subjects. (Nobody Waved Goodbye is about short-changing customers and cutting class.)

I dug Nobody Waved Goodbye a lot. Weirdly, while it is very "1950s," it also looks ahead. It hints at the languid/intropsective/gritty movies that dominated the screen in the early 70s. The reason I liked Nobdody Waved Goodbye (in addition to the fab acting that Annie notes) is that it has a chop chop plot clipping along at a speedy color-by-numbers pace. Those 70s movies often have vague, implied, slow plots. And so it was nice to re-imagine those great 70s movies with a poppy, bubble gum plot moving the ennui along.