To Sir, With Love (EOTWS)

End Of The Week Shorts #46 extract: To Sir, With Love (1967)

To Sir, With Love is pretty brilliant. We've seen this re-worked many times, but looking past that fact, this holds some weight as a film about the education system and how it so often fails to teach children that they can be adults, that they should have self-respect and that they can be self-aware. Articulating these ideas quite well - certainly better than most 'teacher changes student's lives' stories - the strengths of To Sir, With Love lie in its ability to project and manage group and individual psychology with some direct and poignant cinematic language. 

If I were to point to faults, I'd have to say that this is a little contrived and, less timeless, very much so a product of the late 60s. On top of this, the emotional intensity of the third act did cause this rather brittle viewer to cringe quite a bit. Nonetheless, I believe that this is a genuine film, one worth watching.