A Stirring Tribute to From Crayons to Perfume | To Sir, with Love

Fabulous | To Sir, with Love | Sidney Poitier, Christian Roberts

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	• To Sir, with Love Sidney Poitier, Christian Roberts RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video, 1967 average customer review:based on 97 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

HOW TO RUIN ONE'S LIFE

Good, not great tale of a Senior class in a London public school circa 1967. Poitier is excellent as Mark Thackeray, a first year teacher with an engineering degree, who takes on some of the toughest Dickensian type students that one can imagine. Everyone in the class is seriously deficient;no Oxford aspirants here. So, Mark literally throws away the books and attempts to teach social skills, much to the chagrin of many faculty members,too burned out or sarcastic, no longer able or willing to put up much of a fight. Inner city teachers circa 2008 please take note. The saddest commentary in the film is the further deterioration of the public schools since Lulu sang her last note. There is nary a knife to be seen, no guns, no bombs, no wanton gang atttacks. Thackeray does his best, receives a job as an engineer, then turns it down, hoping to save his little corner of the world. The romantics would think of him as a great sport. The realists, myself included, would fear that he's ruining his life. You decide.

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A Stirring Tribute to From Crayons to Perfume

In TO SIR, WITH LOVE director James Clavell recreates a world that is timeless in its rich connotations of a collision of values between a working class and partly thuggish group of east London high school seniors and a dedicated teacher who is determined to give them vitally needed survival skills of which they are only dimly aware. Sidney Poitier is Mark Thackeray, an out of work engineer who agrees to teach only due to financial straits. What occurs in his class has been covered before and since in films like BLACKBOARD JUNGLE and DANGEROUS MINDS, but in Clavell's masterful hands, the result is a near perfect blending of many seemingly disparate elements that somehow fuse into a classic.

Poitier faces a group of tough kids who want to like him but have been conditioned to give all teachers a hard time. As if peeling away the many delicate strands of an onion, Poitier similarly reveals the teen angst that is surely a universal condition regardless of economic status. The film has too many moments of understated power that in the hands of a lesser director might have gone for the overkill, but Poitier, ably assisted by Judy Geeson as a beautiful Pamela Dare and Suzy Kendall as an equally lovely teacher co-worker, all manage to bounce off each other at just the right moment. Where the hoodlums in BLACKBOARD JUNGLE were vile, in Thackeray's class were hiding their inner fears under surface petty disruptions. From the opening reel to the last you simply knew that this was a magical film populated by idealistic types like Poitier and Kendall or unruly students whose unruliness was a mask.

Other reviewers have suggested that the look and feel of the film give it a dated aspect. This may be true but being dated need not be a flaw. In the closing scene at the graduation dance, all the pieces meld into a thoroughly enjoyable whole. The Beatle-type look of the band, the sixties-style frugging, the look on Judy Geeson's face as she dances with Poitier, and the stirring lyrics by Lulu all coalesce into a timeless tribute to the cusp between crayon and perfume. In its own way, TO SIR WITH LOVE is one of those magical movies that announce to an often unready and unlistening world that a new generation is about to make its mark.

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Fabulous

One of Poitiers' best ever!! With an assortment of great supporting cast, music, story and backdrop, To Sir With Love is a classic. Poitier is an out of work enginner who takes a job as a teacher in one of the worst schools in London. When at first he cannot seem to get through to the students with regular teaching methods, Poitiers character takes on a completly different way that teaches both the students and himself about the possibilities in life. Everyone should watch this movie, it was a favorite when I was young and still one today!!

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Timeless Classic!

TSWL has been a favourite of mine for many years. They picked a really great cast to make this film. Although made and set in 1960s London there are certain things that are still relevant to todays world; problem kids no teacher wants in his/her class, racial profiling & stereotyping. This film shows how one man (Poitier) made a difference in trying to tackle these problem at the time.
My other reason for liking this film is that I am into the "Swingin 60s.", its music, its art and fashion, etc.
If you like this film, you would enjoy the two British TV series also set in the 60s; Heartbeat and The Royal; although these are made in the 2000s.

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If Only

Watched this with my 22 year old daughter many years after the last time I had seen it on cable. Still wonderful, innocent, if not naive, tear-jerker, with Lulu's one hit wonder, To Sir With Love, and some other one-hit wonders on a decent sound track. By the way, my daughter loved. We both cried at the end! IF ONLY they made movies like this again!

Novelist James Clavell wrote, produced, and directed this 1967 British film (based on a novel by E.R. Braithwaite) about a rookie teacher who throws out stock lesson plans and really takes command of his unruly, adolescent students in a London school. Poitier is very good as a man struggling with the extent of his commitment to the job, and even more as a teacher whose commitment is to proffering life lessons instead of academics. The spirit of this movie can be found in such recent films as Dangerous Minds and Mr. Holland's Opus, but none is as moving as this one. Besides, the others don't have a title song performed by pop star Lulu. --Tom Keogh

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