To Sir, With Love (1967): The All-Time Classic Schoolroom Drama. 

In the late 1950s, Australian-born-British producer, screenwriter and director James Clavell’s breakthrough into film, came when he wrote the script for the Kurt Neumann’s horror movie The Fly (1958). His directorial debut came with a film called Five Gates To Hell (1959), a curious example of an early entry in the women in prison films, popularised later in the 1970s as sexploitation films. While his final major film as director, The Last Valley would be a historical drama set during the Thirty Years War, starring Michael Caine and Omar Sharif in 1971. But it was with To Sir, With Love which Clavell produced and directed and wrote the screenplay based on E.R. Braithwaite’s semi autobiographical 1959 book (of the same name) that made him an in-demand filmmaker. 

Interestingly, To Sir, With Love was the first and only collaboration between Clavell and his A-list star Sidney Poitier and the film both men would probably be best known for. Though a strong argument can be made for In The Heat of the Night (1967) as Poitier’s greatest film performance. While Clavell if you had asked him probably would have been just as content to be known for the screenplays he wrote for The Great Escape (1963) or his novel Rat King (1962), a semi-fictional account of his time spent as a prisoner of war during WW2 at Changi, or even his epic Asian Saga series of novels which includes Shōgun (1975) which has been made into two TV miniseries, the latest an acclaimed 2024 Hulu/Fx production.

It’s fair to say Clavell’s To Sir, With Love is a very good film. Upon its release it was a massive hit at the box office. Critics were also generally positive in its acclaim and the Directors Guild of America who saw fit to reward Clavell with a nomination for Outstanding Directing in 1967. (He was beaten by Mike Nichols for The Graduate.) Interestingly, as one of Britain’s most loved films, it almost didn’t get made because Columbia Pictures was reluctant to pay Poitier’s asking fee as an actor. Poitier, who carefully curated his career, in films like The Defiant Ones (1958), Lilies of the Field (1963) and Guess Who’s Coming to Diner (1967), ended up taking a pay cut because he truly believed in Clavell’s script and its story, which was inspired by E. R. Braithwaite’s 1959 autobiographical novel of the same name. (The compromise included a provision that Poitier would get 10% of the film’s net gross. Clavell also took a percentage of the film instead of a salary.) 

Old Hollywood depictions of rebellious high school students and teachers forced into a confrontational battle of wits in the classroom doesn’t come any better than the unruly inner-city school crime/drama Blackboard Jungle (1955). In it Glenn Ford leads a strong cast as a determined inexperienced new teacher who is trying to tame a class of students with social and or racial issues. One of the films young protagonists is guess who? Yes, Sidney Poitier who, ironically later in his career, plays a teacher in To Sir, With Love, who suffers the same sort of indignities as Ford’s idealistic Richard Dadier. However it’s fair to say Poitier’s motley group of students in To Sir, With Love are a lot tamer than Blackboard Jungle’s delinquents. Interestingly Blackboard Jungle was famous and controversial in part because of its portrayal of juvenile delinquency, but also because the opening credits featured the recording of Bill Haley’s classic record, Rock Around the Clock. Moralists were convinced that the film and the music would inspire juvenile delinquency. It was even removed from consideration at the Venice Film Festival in 1955. To Sir, With Love though successfully avoids the controversy plagued by Blackboard Jungle’s opening with its sweet sensual title song sung by Scottish singer Lulu in her film acting debut.

You have to give credit where credit is due to writer/director James Clavell who pulls To Sir, With Love’s story out of the drab post war years (Braithwaite’s novel is set in 1947) and into the swinging sixties. It’s easy to criticise his reasons for doing so, but apart from the 60s being a time when a youth-driven cultural revolution was playing out, it was also a significant decade when civil rights was front and centre. Arguably the biggest reason for the film’s success was Clavell’s insistence that Poitier lead the charge. In real life Poitier was a civil rights advocate, who was well aware of the task at hand. Translating that to the screen is what makes To Sir, With Love an interesting movie, especially in one of the film’s key scenes where the death of a black student’s mother stirs up an awkward explanation from Thackeray’s students as to why they can’t deliver a bouquet of flowers to a black household. It’s a sobering scene which is heightened by Poitier’s reaction. He’s turning himself inside out trying not to cry and rage at the same time.

It’s this sort of self control that Poitier’s Thackeray exhibits throughout the film, especially in the scenes he is being goaded into a reaction from his students. In the film’s boxing scene for instance, Thackeray is challenged to a boxing bout by his student Bert Denham (Christian Roberts), who has stubbornly opposed Thackeray at every turn. Thackeray knows it’s a bad idea but reluctantly decides to go ahead with it. As the sparring gets underway Denham lands a few early blows to Thackeray’s face. When Denham continues to pour on the pressure becoming more aggressive with each punch, it’s obvious the class bully is taking delight in humiliating Thackeray in front of his gym classmates, until Thackeray throws a reactionary perhaps reluctant punch to Denham’s stomach which effectively ends the fight. Regaining his composure Thackeray ends the fight to nurse Denham and his bruised ego. When Denham later asked Thackeray why he didn’t fight back when he was being repeatedly pummelled, Thackeray replied “What would that have solved?” Thackeray’s counter-question ends up teaching Denham an important lesson, one of restraint, respect and gentlemanly conduct. The fight they had to have also becomes the turning point in their teacher/student relationship. Denham finally accepts that if he is to be treated like an adult, he has to act like an adult, something Thackeray has challenged him to be from the very beginning.

The unorthodox teaching technique employed on Denham, is actually the central strategy Thackeray hoped would work to bring out the best of all of his students, rather than having to fight with them on a daily basis. Of course it may not have happened if it wasn’t for the burning sanitary napkin scene. In this pivotal scene of the film, Thackeray’s saintly patience finally reaches boiling point when he finds that someone had tossed a used sanitary napkin into the classroom furnace. After losing his temper, and some soul searching, Thackeray ceremoniously throws out his school textbooks. From now on he decides to prepare them instead for the real world since they are about to become adults. When Thackeray is asked what will they talk about? He replies, “About life, survival, love, death, sex, marriage, rebellion. Anything you want.”

It’s not difficult to pin down why To Sir, With Love succeeds as a good-natured, entertaining school drama. Its themes of racial prejudice, education and identity still even resonate today. Elsewhere, the film succeeds because Clavell keeps things relatively tight and moves the story along just enough to keep things interesting. He also makes great use of his exterior sets of London’s east end and while the camerawork seems a little pedestrian at times (except for the great scene where the camera floats around the classroom during roll call), he makes up for it by getting the best out of Poitier in every moment he is on the screen. Thanks also to a great young supporting cast there are genuinely wonderful performances all round, especially Judy Neeson as Miss Pamela Dare, who goes on to develop a crush on Poitier’s Thackeray, But it’s never truly acted upon thanks to Thackeray’s moral compass. That said, there is real warmth in the scenes shared between Neeson and Poitier. Later in the film in character Poitier and Neeson partner together for the “Ladies Choice” dance. Behind the scene, the two actors laughed and rehearsed a lot because Geeson was admittedly a bad dancer. The funny thing is that it is Poitier who looks out of his depth trying to keep up with Geeson as they dance on-screen.

Some say To Sir, With Love comes to a predictable end, (warning spoiler ahead) after Thackeray gets a nudge in the right direction to stay on as a teacher. You see Thackeray always thought of his teaching job as a temporary gig because he always longed to be an engineer. So when he finally gets offered an engineering job (in the closing scenes of the third act) he is left in two minds what to do. But when two students (in the class below) mock the gift he received from his graduating students, he comes to the realisation that his work in helping shape young minds isn’t quite finished yet. And as he stands looking at the letter offering him a new job, he decides to rip it up. It is arguably the bravest thing he will do.