To Sir, with Love

Unable to find engineering work, the Guyanese engineer Mark Thackeray takes a teaching job in London's East End as a stopgap. The class is one the system has given up on: months from leaving school, listening to nobody, and practised at driving teachers out. One day Thackeray throws the textbooks in the bin and starts talking about being an adult instead of following the syllabus: work, marriage, death, rebellion. The film is less about education than about how respect gets built. The first time the students call him sir is written not as a triumph but as a mutual agreement. The tension of his being the only Black teacher there is discussed openly. James Clavell wrote, directed and produced. The source is E. R. Braithwaite's autobiographical novel of 1959. Sidney Poitier plays Thackeray, and the singer Lulu appears in her first film role. Poitier's deal entered film history. He took thirty thousand dollars up front against ten percent of the gross, becoming the first actor paid on the gross rather than net profit. The film passed forty-two million dollars, which put his share above four million. Lulu's title song went to number one on the Billboard chart in October 1967 and stayed five weeks, ending the year as America's biggest-selling single. Who it is for: anyone who likes the earliest examples of the teacher-in-the-classroom film, and Poitier. Who it is not for: anyone wanting complexity. The turnaround is too fast, several students are drawn with one trait, and the ending resolves too easily.