Sidney Poitier, doing just fine as usual, is a teacher assigned to a rough gang of kids in an Enblish working-class school. They hate him. Not because he's black, though that fact figures in a few off-hand insults, but because he's a toff. He speaks proper English and dresses in suits and ties and he knows stuff -- like the girls' bouffant hair styles are 2,000 years old. He takes them to museums to prove it. He shows them that there's more to a salad than just a couple of leaves of wilted lettuce, which is an advance over the culinary skills of my ex spouse. I once tried to show her how to boil an egg. The resulting scuffle became a scandal but I thought Fox News went a little too far in labeling it "Hard-Boiled-Egg-Gate".
These ructious British kids are user friendly. Not like Poitier's earlier effort, "Blackboard Jungle," where they threw baseballs at the teacher and beat hell out of him in an alley. Here, their English equivalents are just noisy and irreverent. Potier straightens them out in the course of the film. One of the students, the delectable blond Judy Geeson, develops a crush on him, but the suave, knowing, and sympathetic teacher knows how to solve that problem too. "Turn him to any cause of policy, The Gordian Knot of it he will unloose, Familiar as his garter" The film oozes a savory sentimentality. It's like a fairy tale with a happy ending. The best part is that we know the happy ending is coming, so we can allow ourselves an anxiety jag, as if we weren't quite sure. Watching the kids mature under "Sir's" guidance is like attending a religious ritual, a fixed point in a changing and disappointing universe. And what a climax -- with Poitier and the adoring Judy Geeson dancing 1960's style to the theme song.
The theme song, "To Sir, With Love," by I guess Ron Grainer, was a popular tune on the period hit parade. At the time it was just another pop tune. But listening to it today, the inventiveness of the melody, the intricate rhyming lyrics, the purity and clarity of the vocalist's voice -- she seems to have flawless control over her slow vibrato -- it just rouses our awareness of the decline in vernacular music since then, unless you can't get enough of electronic percussion, anger, and rhymes that don't quite rhyme.
Sure, the film is laden with devices that are designed to engage the viewer's emotions. But at least the emotions are among those that have traditionally been considered positive. If it were remade today, I wonder if the students would turn out to be vampires, invade Poitier's home, wrench off his head, and suck the blood out of his neck cavity with straws. God, we've become desensitized to the point of insensibility.
These ructious British kids are user friendly. Not like Poitier's earlier effort, "Blackboard Jungle," where they threw baseballs at the teacher and beat hell out of him in an alley. Here, their English equivalents are just noisy and irreverent. Potier straightens them out in the course of the film. One of the students, the delectable blond Judy Geeson, develops a crush on him, but the suave, knowing, and sympathetic teacher knows how to solve that problem too. "Turn him to any cause of policy, The Gordian Knot of it he will unloose, Familiar as his garter" The film oozes a savory sentimentality. It's like a fairy tale with a happy ending. The best part is that we know the happy ending is coming, so we can allow ourselves an anxiety jag, as if we weren't quite sure. Watching the kids mature under "Sir's" guidance is like attending a religious ritual, a fixed point in a changing and disappointing universe. And what a climax -- with Poitier and the adoring Judy Geeson dancing 1960's style to the theme song.
The theme song, "To Sir, With Love," by I guess Ron Grainer, was a popular tune on the period hit parade. At the time it was just another pop tune. But listening to it today, the inventiveness of the melody, the intricate rhyming lyrics, the purity and clarity of the vocalist's voice -- she seems to have flawless control over her slow vibrato -- it just rouses our awareness of the decline in vernacular music since then, unless you can't get enough of electronic percussion, anger, and rhymes that don't quite rhyme.
Sure, the film is laden with devices that are designed to engage the viewer's emotions. But at least the emotions are among those that have traditionally been considered positive. If it were remade today, I wonder if the students would turn out to be vampires, invade Poitier's home, wrench off his head, and suck the blood out of his neck cavity with straws. God, we've become desensitized to the point of insensibility.