To Sir, With Love (1967)

(London, contemporary)
IMDb

There is a story in my family about how when my mom was a teenager she wanted to go and see this movie, but my grandmother wouldn't let her because she had come under the impression that it was somehow a scandalous production. Well shortly after this ultimatum, a local church leader praised the film as a wonderful source of appropriate and uplifting entertainment for young people. Given this oft told tale, its kind of surprising that I had never actually seen this movie before. In addition to the family history element, To Sire, With Love is the archetypal inspiring teacher, rowdy classroom movie of the 60's (much as Stand and Deliver was to its time). Star Poitier had some experience in this genera, have been one of the students in the 1955 Glenn Ford film Blackboard Jungle (the iconic teacher film of its decade).

Poitier plays Mark Thackeray, a Guiana born (American educated?) engineer, who takes a temp job at an inner-city London High School when he is unable to find employment in his chosen field. Predictably the first few days are rough on teacher and students, but in time a revelation hits (triggered by a classroom incident), and Mr. Thackeray starts treating his students as adults. Having never really experienced this before, the students respond positively, saving for a few hold outs who are necessary for plot purposes.

The movie now has the added benefit of wonderfully evoking its time an place. We've the music, which includes Lulu's rendition of the endearing but slightly saccharine titular song, and some mostly forgotten Herman's Hermits knock-off band, providing tunes for the school dance. You've also got a lot of British people complaining about the way the Yanks are running the world, I shudder to think I'll probably be hearing a lot of the same things said here in thirty years regarding the Chinese. It's also interesting to contrast the racial situation in England with that in the United States, there was defiantly some unease there, but a little farther from the surface then we think of it being in America at the time.

One of the funny things that unexpectedly jumped out at me was the undercurrent of that nations socialist experiment. There is a scene when Thackeray has to hand out these blue forms to the graduating class, so that they can register for the national health care plan. While kind of reminiscent of the American practice of registering with selective service, this combined with the depressed, run down feeling of the school and the adjoining neighbourhood, and the general sense of failed empire, makes for a kind of 1984 lite. Maybe I'm reading to much into this, Brazil after all is still stuck in my brain.

One must appreciate the straight forward simplicity of this film, it works on the level of Plato's perfect form, this is exactly how this movie should look like. The only real false lead in the film, possibly dictated by the times, is a hinted at postnatal romantic relationship between Thackeray and a blond lady teacher at the school. Of course Poitier would cross that boundary in another film of the same year, Guess Who's Coming To Dinner. The actor also had one more entry in that triumvirate year, the best picture winner In the Heat of the Night. Between these three films, Sidney Poitier was the number one box-office attraction of 1967.