I knew that the Australian-born novelist James Clavell also acted as a film scriptwriter, often adapting his own novels, but until I recently watched "To Sir, with Love" I had not realised that he was also a film director. This film, which marks his directing debut, was not based on one of his books but on an autobiographical novel by E. R. Braithwaite.
"To Sir, with Love" is, along with "Goodbye Mr Chips", probably the best-known British entry in the "inspirational teacher" genre, but the two films are very different. Mr Chips was an elderly retired teacher looking back nostalgically at his long career. Mark Thackeray, the hero of this film, is not a career teacher but an unemployed engineer who only applies for a teaching position because he cannot find a job in engineering. Chips taught in a prestigious public school; Thackeray's job is at a secondary modern in the East End, a deprived working-class area of London.
One thing that caused quite a stir in 1967, but which would not do so today, is the fact that Thackeray is black. (He is originally from what the film calls "British Guiana", although it had become independent as Guyana the previous year). His students are nearly all white, although today virtually all East End schools would have a sizeable number of pupils drawn from the black and other minority ethnic communities. Racial issues, however, play a relatively minor part in the film. One of Thackeray's less enlightened colleagues makes some insensitive remarks, but apart from that the only real hostility he experiences comes, surprisingly, from the only mixed-race pupil in his class, a boy who identifies as white and resents the way his white mother has been treated by his black father. The film is much more about social class than it is about race. Thackeray takes on the school's most troublesome class, working-class youngsters with a well-deserved reputation for disruptive behaviour, and teaches them about self-respect by treating them, for the first time in their lives, as responsible adults rather than irresponsible children. In return, Thackeray earns the class's admiration and realises that he has a vocation as a teacher. The film ends with his rejecting an offer of an engineering job to stay on at the school.
Thackeray's class are all in their final term at school, which in 1967 would have meant that they would have been 14 or 15. (The school leaving age in Britain was 15 until 1972, when it was raised to 16). The actors who play them, however, are all considerably older; Christian Roberts, who plays class ringleader Bert Denham, was 23 when the film was made, and Judy Geeson, who plays his classmate Pamela Dare, was 19. This casting may have been intended to make some of the film's plot lines more acceptable in the eyes of the public. It is strongly implied that Pamela has a romantic crush on the handsome Thackeray, and such a storyline would have been far more controversial had she actually been played by a 15-year-old actress.
Another member of the cast was Lulu, here making her acting debut. She also sang the film's title song, also known as "To Sir With Love", which became a huge hit in the American market, much to the surprise of the British. (In Britain it failed to make the Top Ten). Its transatlantic success may have contributed to Lulu concentrating more on singing than on acting in subsequent years; she became one of the most successful British pop acts of the late sixties and seventies, but only acted in a handful of later films, most of them now forgotten.
The film's main drawback is its pervasive sentimentality and its simplistic assumption that all the problems of education in deprived inner-city areas can be overcome simply by drafting in better (by which it means more permissive) teachers. Yet it is saved from a lower mark by the arresting performance of that fine actor Sidney Poitier in the leading role. The plot may seem unrealistic, but Poitier does enough to make his character entirely believable and to make every adult watching the film wish that there had been a Mark Thackeray on the staff of his or her school. 6/10
"To Sir, with Love" is, along with "Goodbye Mr Chips", probably the best-known British entry in the "inspirational teacher" genre, but the two films are very different. Mr Chips was an elderly retired teacher looking back nostalgically at his long career. Mark Thackeray, the hero of this film, is not a career teacher but an unemployed engineer who only applies for a teaching position because he cannot find a job in engineering. Chips taught in a prestigious public school; Thackeray's job is at a secondary modern in the East End, a deprived working-class area of London.
One thing that caused quite a stir in 1967, but which would not do so today, is the fact that Thackeray is black. (He is originally from what the film calls "British Guiana", although it had become independent as Guyana the previous year). His students are nearly all white, although today virtually all East End schools would have a sizeable number of pupils drawn from the black and other minority ethnic communities. Racial issues, however, play a relatively minor part in the film. One of Thackeray's less enlightened colleagues makes some insensitive remarks, but apart from that the only real hostility he experiences comes, surprisingly, from the only mixed-race pupil in his class, a boy who identifies as white and resents the way his white mother has been treated by his black father. The film is much more about social class than it is about race. Thackeray takes on the school's most troublesome class, working-class youngsters with a well-deserved reputation for disruptive behaviour, and teaches them about self-respect by treating them, for the first time in their lives, as responsible adults rather than irresponsible children. In return, Thackeray earns the class's admiration and realises that he has a vocation as a teacher. The film ends with his rejecting an offer of an engineering job to stay on at the school.
Thackeray's class are all in their final term at school, which in 1967 would have meant that they would have been 14 or 15. (The school leaving age in Britain was 15 until 1972, when it was raised to 16). The actors who play them, however, are all considerably older; Christian Roberts, who plays class ringleader Bert Denham, was 23 when the film was made, and Judy Geeson, who plays his classmate Pamela Dare, was 19. This casting may have been intended to make some of the film's plot lines more acceptable in the eyes of the public. It is strongly implied that Pamela has a romantic crush on the handsome Thackeray, and such a storyline would have been far more controversial had she actually been played by a 15-year-old actress.
Another member of the cast was Lulu, here making her acting debut. She also sang the film's title song, also known as "To Sir With Love", which became a huge hit in the American market, much to the surprise of the British. (In Britain it failed to make the Top Ten). Its transatlantic success may have contributed to Lulu concentrating more on singing than on acting in subsequent years; she became one of the most successful British pop acts of the late sixties and seventies, but only acted in a handful of later films, most of them now forgotten.
The film's main drawback is its pervasive sentimentality and its simplistic assumption that all the problems of education in deprived inner-city areas can be overcome simply by drafting in better (by which it means more permissive) teachers. Yet it is saved from a lower mark by the arresting performance of that fine actor Sidney Poitier in the leading role. The plot may seem unrealistic, but Poitier does enough to make his character entirely believable and to make every adult watching the film wish that there had been a Mark Thackeray on the staff of his or her school. 6/10