To Sir, With Love
England's take on The Blackboard Jungle benefits immeasurably from Sidney Poitier's dignified performance as Mark Thackeray, an unemployed black engineer who takes a position as a teacher of underprivileged kids in a run-down London school in order to make ends meet until something better comes along.
I enjoyed this film enormously as a 16 year old when it first came out. Revisiting it years later shows that the rough and ready disadvantaged working class kids (downright scary to this white rural middle class 16 year old back in 1968) are fairly obvious stage school alumni, and pretty un-scary, all things told. In particular, Christian Roberts, who made something of a career out of playing bad boys at the time, comes across as a nice middle class lad putting on a "Lor' lumme!" accent and bigging it up fairly unconvincingly.
For all that, the film still has lessons to be taught, and a warm and loving heart, and a central performance of quiet strength from Poitier (even though he dances worse than I do, and I dance REALLY badly!).
England's take on The Blackboard Jungle benefits immeasurably from Sidney Poitier's dignified performance as Mark Thackeray, an unemployed black engineer who takes a position as a teacher of underprivileged kids in a run-down London school in order to make ends meet until something better comes along.
I enjoyed this film enormously as a 16 year old when it first came out. Revisiting it years later shows that the rough and ready disadvantaged working class kids (downright scary to this white rural middle class 16 year old back in 1968) are fairly obvious stage school alumni, and pretty un-scary, all things told. In particular, Christian Roberts, who made something of a career out of playing bad boys at the time, comes across as a nice middle class lad putting on a "Lor' lumme!" accent and bigging it up fairly unconvincingly.
For all that, the film still has lessons to be taught, and a warm and loving heart, and a central performance of quiet strength from Poitier (even though he dances worse than I do, and I dance REALLY badly!).