Those of us lucky enough to have made it through high school are rarely hard-pressed to recall the eccentricities of those whose job it was to shape our young minds. My own academic years were, in fact, populated—though not exclusively—with just the sort of teachers you often see played for laughs onscreen: the melancholy spinster, the leering ex-Marine, the ass-wiggling divorcee, the sensitive guy with a philosophy degree and tidy beard.
:However, in most of the better films that feature teachers as central characters, educators are usually played straight. The focus is less likely to be on their goofiness and more likely to be on their longings and their dogged attempts to reach the seemingly unreachable. Common to many of the movies listed below is an undisguised sentimentality coupled with assorted lessons in gleaning large victories from small defeats.
These Three (dir: William Wyler, 1936) A decade before making The Best Years of Our Lives, perhaps the definitive movie about soldiers returning home, Wyler hit a solid lick with this adaptation of Lillian Hellman’s play The Children’s Hour. Miriam Hopkins and Merle Oberon play teachers at girl’s school, both of whom fall for the same man; the cow patty hits the fan when an obnoxious student, played to the hilt by Bonita Granville, starts telling tales about the women and their alleged affairs, all for the sake of missing a little school. Though the film substitutes a heterosexual love triangle for the insinuated lesbianism in Hellman’s original, it packs every bit the dramatic wallop, largely because the issue was never so much one of ladies loving ladies, but of the damage that lies can do.
Goodbye Mr. Chips (dir: Sam Wood, 1939) We first encounter the revered Latin instructor Mr. Chipping as an old man, when he resembles Mark Twain and sounds like Julia Child. Based on James Hilton’s fine novel, the film embarks upon a pleasantly sentimental flashback over his years at an insular, history-rich English school for boys. Good-natured chap though he is, Robert Donat’s Chips suffers from an aversion to taking chances, which can mean missing out on anything from dancing to traveling abroad. Nonetheless, he gets his boxers in a wad over a young woman (Greer Garson, in her debut) and clumsily wades headlong into the riskiest of endeavors: romance. N.B.: This film should not be confused with the decidedly inferior 1969 remake starring Peter O’Toole.
The Blackboard Jungle (dir: Richard Brooks, 1955) Considered shocking in its day, this film is a landmark of sorts not only because of its gritty subject matter—Glenn Ford plays an idealistic young teacher thrown to the teen wolves—but also in that it was the first feature with a rock ’n’ roll soundtrack. (It opens with Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock.”) Needless to report, some of the tough guys seem a shade dated, but the movie is nonetheless gripping at times. A young Sidney Poitier has some fine moments as a troubled teen.
The Miracle Worker (dir: Arthur Penn, 1962) Before she became known ever after as Mrs. Robinson, Anne Bancroft did some of her finest work playing Helen Keller’s strong-willed teacher, Annie Sullivan. Similar to the play by William Gibson (who also wrote the screenplay), this film presents Keller as a grubby little dervish with a wicked roundhouse right. Played by Patty Duke, she thrashes about in solitude and is coddled by her overprotective parents. Sullivan puts an end to all that, winning a monumental battle of wills and eventually clawing her way into Keller’s dark world. For comparison, check out 1986’s Children of a Lesser God, in which the interactions between teacher (William Hurt) and headstrong deaf girl (Marlee Matlin) are likewise combustive—only in this case, the film adds a little romance, since the girl is not only of age, she also sees fine and looks great.
To Sir, With Love (dir: James Clavell, 1967) Not so much an updating of The Blackboard Jungle as a transposition, with London’s East End replacing the Big Apple and Sidney Poitier taking Glenn Ford’s place at the front of the classroom. The actor does his soft-spoken routine to excellent effect, reminding us that hell hath no fury like a dapper gentleman when he gets good and pissed. Poitier seems particularly distressed by the female students, at one point bellowing, “I am sick of your foul language, your crude behavior, and your sluttish manner!” He later asks a foxy coworker to give some of them lessons in makeup.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (dir: Ronald Neame, 1969) An excellent bit of acting by Maggie Smith, who plays a scandalously frank and slightly bawdy teacher at a girls’ school in 1930s Edinburgh. Realizing that few things captivate students like self-revelation, she hips them to political and sexual matters, using her own desires and experiences as illustrative devices. The girls, of course, can’t get enough, and Miss Brodie becomes so wrapped up in helping her charges blossom that she is late in noticing her own wilting.
Conrack (dir: Martin Ritt, 1974) Based on Pat Conroy’s autobiographical novel The Water is Wide, Conrack follows the author’s experiences as a young teacher on Daufuskie Island, S.C. Finding a community gripped by illiteracy and an uncaring school system that interprets the Gullah dialect as half-witted mumbling, Jon Voight in the title role goes about setting matters right and turning the young folk on to a little Beethoven to boot. Though it bogs down occasionally, it’s pretty fine stuff, and Hume Cronyn does an excellent supporting turn as the crotchety school official Skeffington.
Carried Away (dir: Bruno Barreto, 1996) Though typically saddled in roles as a cockeyed madman, Dennis Hopper actually has some range. This largely unnoticed film, based on Jim Harrison’s novel Farmer, is fresh evidence, with Hopper playing a small-town teacher crippled by a farming accident and a lack of passion. Life becomes at once exhilarating and complicated when he succumbs to the charms of a worldly 17-year-old. Solid performances abound, with Amy Locane playing the girl as neither a bedeviling nymphet nor a complete idiot, but rather as a thinking, feeling person trying to find her way in life.
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