To Sir, with Love (1967)

Directed by James Clavell. Starring Sidney Poitier, Christian Roberts, Judy Geeson, Suzy Kendall, Lulu, Christopher Chittell, Faith Brook, Geoffrey Bayldon, Edward Burnham, Anthony Villaroel, Dervis Ward.

While trying to find an engineering position, Poitier accepts a teaching job at an inner city school in London’s East End, whipping a classroom of unruly troublemakers into shape so that they’ll be prepared for the real world after graduation. The dated milieu is more forgivable than the dated attitudes—at least a couple of “Sir”’s life lessons are outright foolish—but what causes this well-intentioned high school drama to earn failing grades is how tame, naïve, and scarcely credible the whole thing is. That’s because all of the important characters are reduced to one-dimensional stereotypes (even Poitier’s, embodying writer/director Clavell’s notions of dignity and morality), and they function as gears in a machine, turning this way and that as required by the shopworn plot, until the teeth are filed down, resistance vanishes, and everything can spin in harmony. Sub-plot strands and minor characters are discarded without a second thought, as if resolution is a form of violence that must be barred from infiltrating the awkward arrangements and bland aesthetics of the classroom-at-large. A sleeper hit, based on the novel by an E. R. Braithwaite book, and followed almost thirty years later by a made-for-television sequel. In addition to having a supporting role as one of the students, pop singer Lulu warbles the title tune.

41/100