Up the Down Staircase (1967)

Directed by Robert Mulligan. Starring Sandy Dennis, Patrick Bedford, Eileen Heckart, Jeff Howard, Ruth White, Roy Poole, Ellen O’Mara, Jean Stapleton, Lewis Wallach, Salvatore Rasa, Sorrell Booke, Jose Rodriguez, Vinnette Carroll.

Released within just a couple of weeks of each other, this drama could easily be considered the “cross-Atlantic To Sir, with Love,” as they each take place at overcrowded and underfunded high schools and focus on an inexperienced teacher who tries to get through to his or her troubled students. The teacher here is played by Dennis, so gentle and hesitant as to seem fragile in spite of her eagerness, which makes it hard to believe that she wouldn’t have cracked before the end of the first week. But she soldiers on in her classroom of mixed stereotypes (the nerdy student government kid, the bad boy delinquent, the class clown, the lovesick girl, the shy boy, etc.), and for being not quite so sentimental, more realistic, and less dated, this one is clearly the superior picture. Potshots at bureaucracy and administrative indifference/impotence ring true, and most of the young actors (as unpracticed as Dennis’ educator) give naturalistic performances—the way that Howard radiates in silence suggests he could have been a matinée idol in a different life—but the transformations aren’t especially credible as presented, and too much goes wrong in the last couple of reels to emerge an unqualified success (e.g., Rodriguez coming out of his shell and spilling his secret is contrived beyond belief). Try to spot Bud Cort in his first film appearance as an extra in the hallway. Alan J. Pakula produced.

64/100