To Sir, with Love (1967)

To Sir, with Love (1967)

7/10

Starring
Sidney Poitier


Directed by James Clavell

There is no denying it that Sidney Poitier is one of the best actors to have graced the screen. His grace, his demeanor and his style of delivery is nothing but grand. To Sir, with Love is another great movie he did, which if you have not had the privilege of seeing I ask that you do so now.

There’s no denying that Sidney Poitier is one of the best actors to have graced the screen. His grace, demeanor, and style of delivery are nothing but grand. To Sir, with Love is another great movie he did, and if you haven’t had the privilege of seeing it, I ask that you do so now.

There have been many movies where the lead comes into a school where ruffians control how things are run, and the man makes a dramatic change in the way things happen. What makes me prefer this one over the others is that they often portray the students like overgrown onions who only respond to violence. From my little experience teaching, I can boldly say those movies tend to exaggerate how teenagers relate to authority. Maybe they do this to add more dramatic effect, but in this movie, the dramatic effect comes from the simple ways the lead character, Mark Thackeray (Sidney Poitier), changes the children’s way of thinking.

I’ve seen other popular Poitier movies, like the ones he did with Bill Cosby, In the Heat of the Night (1967), and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)—all great movies, and I’d add this one to the list. To Sir, with Love is a 1967 drama movie that I heard about on Twitter one night and decided to give it a try.

The movie will forever be iconic, and you can watch it anytime. The plot and events in the movie are so compelling that I’ll likely give it a second watch sooner rather than later.

The movie’s plot follows an out-of-work engineer named Mark Thackeray, who is desperate for a job. After searching for engineering jobs and coming up empty, he decides to take up teaching. His first teaching job is at North Quay Secondary School in the tough East End of London. The students there are known for making their teachers’ lives unbearable, and his class is the most notorious, as they’re in their final year.

Mark starts off easy, taking the children through the syllabus, until they turn on him one morning, causing him to lose his temper. From then on, he decides to change his approach. He shifts the class syllabus to focus on life lessons, sharing his own experiences with the children. Soon, a bond forms. However, the bond isn’t strong enough at first, because no matter how much he tries to teach them responsibility, life and its challenges aren’t on his or the pupils’ side.

To Sir, with Love, what a classic.