Lulu :: To Sir With Love

[postlink]http://yoursoundtrackfilm.blogspot.com/2011/11/lulu-to-sir-with-love.html[/postlink]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OG49glGm2Xsendofvid
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To Sir With Love

    A                        B
     Those school girl days
                D                          A
     of telling tales and biting nails are gone
   A                B
     But in my mind
                 D                         A
     I know they will, will still live on and on


     Abm                 C#m
         But how do you thank someone
                 Abm                        C#m
         who has taken you from crayons to perfume
       B          E             B      F#
         It isn't easy but I'll try....


            B
     If you wanted the sky
         D                       B
     I'd write across the sky in letters
                D                    B
     that would soar a thousand feet high
        E         F#   
     To Sir, With Love


     A                     B
        The time has come
                 D                             A
     for closing books and long last looks must end
     A               B
     And as I leave
                 D                     A
     I know that I am leaving my best friend


     Abm                        C#m
        A friend who taught me right from wrong
            Abm                              C#m
        and weak from strong, that's a lot to learn
        B                E             B       F#
        What! what can I give you in return


            B
     If you wanted the moon
     D                               B
     I would try to make a start But I
           D                         B
     would rather you let me give my heart
        E         F#      
     To Sir, With Love


     A                        B
        Those awkward years
                    D                     A
        have hurried by why did they fly away
     A                 B
        Why is it Sir
                      D                    A
        children grow up to be people some day


     Abm                          C#m
        What takes the place of climbing trees
             Abm                         C#m
        and dirty knees in the world outside
     B                E             B     F#
        What is there for you I can buy


            B
     If you wanted the world
            D                        B
     I'd surround it with a wall I'd scrawl
           D                           B
     These words with letters ten feet tall
        E         F#      
     To Sir, With Love

*http://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/l/lulu/to_sir_with_love_ver3_crd.htm

Storyline, To Sir With Love (UK, 1967):


Engineer Mark Thackeray arrives to teach a totally undisciplined class at an East End school. Still hoping for a good engineering job, he's hopeful that he won't be there long. He starts implementing his own brand of classroom discipline: forcing the pupils to treat each other with respect. Inevitably he begins getting involved in the students' personal lives, and must avoid the advances of an amorous student while winning over the class tough. What will he decide when the engineering job comes through?by Ed Sutton 

After searching unsuccessfully for work as an engineer, Mark Thackeray accepts a teaching position at a rough, East End London high school. His colleagues warn him about the impossible brutes he will encounter there, but still he enters his classroom unprepared for their horrible defiance. A classic portrayal of teen angst, where these impoverished, battered kids, who have turned out badly, are determined to brutalize everyone around them. The teachers let them dance between classes to vent some of their aggressive energy, but they all treat the classroom as though it were an unsupervised sandbox. With transcendent dignity, Thackary tames them and teaches them self-respect. As sentimental as the plot may be, the kids' transition is touching, and Poitier is as cool and classy as ever.by alfiehitchie

An engineer by trade, Mark Thackeray, a black man, gets a teaching post until he can find an engineering job. His posting is to teach the senior class at North Quay Secondary School in East London, a school in a tough neighborhood where even the most troubled of students are sent. The school is in a primarily white neighborhood where there is a strict moral code amongst the residents of race relations between whites and blacks. Encouraged by his female colleagues but given a sense of resignation by his male colleagues, Thackeray is having trouble with his class, who are openly disruptive. He is having issues with two students in particular, Denham and Miss Dare, issues which he will have to resolve carefully. After an incident which he considers the last straw, he comes to the realization of what his class really does need to learn.by Huggo

A perfect classic that instantly mesmerizes. Remade 3x in the 1990s: first as Sister Act2 (1993); followed by Dangerous Minds (1995); and finally as To Sir With Love2 (1996), the made-for-TV sequel with the aging Sidney Poitier. None of these remakes hold a candle to the beaming lighthouse of the original. Based on the genteel ER Braithwaite's own experiences in 1960s England, the screenplay is a primer in social psychology.

Mark Thackeray (Sidney Poitier in his signature role) is a struggling Elec.Eng. graduate who can't get an engineering job, so he answers an ad for a teacher in the East End (a chronically run down, industrial part) of London. He's a decent man who's nevertheless met the many faces of rejection, of prejudice, of poverty, yet no-one has managed yet to break his spirit-otherwise he couldn't have brought hope to the East Enders the way he clearly did. He's about 30ish, and single. Ha, as he himself observes to his new students, `Marriage is NO way of life for the weak, the selfish, or the insecure.' Amen to that! Spoken like a man I wouldn't mind (exchanging-shhh) for a husband.

Mr Thackeray is a very cluey guy. He quickly realizes that the `razzing' he's getting from his ill-educated, brutish students is courtesy of their need to dominate the system to SUCCESSFULLY cover-up their academic incompetence. Moreover, the push for this always comes from the biggest bully (ie who rules the school), because the b***ard always has enough cunning to realize he can't afford to show any weakness, for fear of getting toppled by his own. Very primitive behaviour, baboons do the same thing!

Anyway, things come to a head 29mins into the movie. Already exhausted after just a few weeks, Mr Thackeray walks into his classroom and instantly smells a foul stench emanating from the smoking stove. `All you boys, OUT! The girls stay where they are!' he barks. He waits till the boys exit, then rounds on the girls: `There are certain things a decent woman keeps private; only a filthy slut would have done this! And those who stood by and encouraged her are just as bad, I don't care who they are!' He thinks it was a girl who threw a soiled sanitary pad onto the fire (this is never spelled out), but I disagree. Girls don't have ANY fascination for such things, only immature, brutish boys do. My point being, that, of course, it was the boys; but the accusation was extremely effective against the girls nevertheless, because it instantly drove a wedge between the genders. The girls didn't appreciate being humiliated by the boys in the first place, but to be accused of their guilt was now BEYOND what they're prepared to tolerate.

That was the watershed for `Sir'. By the time he re-enters after having demanded they clear the air, he's figured out how he should treat his students, and demonstrates his seriousness as he just junks all their textbooks. Obviously, it's the right technique at the right time, because it starts to work (they don't always). His students begin to trust him; especially the girls who have found their independence from the boys. Soon the class goes on a field trip to the museum. Matched to Lulu's glorious almost-lullaby of a theme song, we watch a montage of heart-tugging stills (by Laurie Ridley & Dennis Stone) of the students wide-eyedly enjoying their first museum experience, as they realize that their mod hairstyles and fashions really are just retreads from history.

There IS another watershed scene that seems to shock all the kids, in the yard, when Denham (Christian Roberts)'s girlfriend Pamela Dare (Judy Geeson) rounds on Seales (Anthony Villaroel), the only black student in the class, for `never speaking up'; who then publicly admits `I'm not Sir. I only wish I was'. It was what they were all thinking about themselves, but Seales is the only one who blurts it out.

The politics between Denham and his girlfriend shift again, because she develops a probably life-altering crush on Sir. I always smirk at the scene where Babs (Lulu) defends Pamela: `You lay off, Denham, you sonova b_' as her voice is drowned out by a passing train. It must be in large part due to this movie that people now GROAN at objections to interracial relationships (so do I-to objections I mean), and no wonder-Sir is `big, broad, handsome, clean, intelligent...', as the Deputy Head, Mrs Evans (Faith Brook) describes him. Poitier is never better than in the scene with Mrs Evans where he is tortured and at a loss at Pamela's crush. His other delicious scenes include being embarrassed at the bawdy candor of some mothers on the bus during the opening, and at the final dance when he gets tongue-tied and almost bursts out crying. I have no doubt that the entire cast had a deep camaraderie.

Sir is NOT PERFECT, though. Some of his attitudes are unjust. He's too aloof as he kept whitewashing the world's continued right to chronically disadvantage his students. He refuses to discuss questions of justice external to his classroom. This seems like insensitivity to me! But he'd apparently put in enough work to have his students trust him, although it was a fine line that could've still gone wrong. Denham, the brewing storm, to our astonishment, actually feared the power that teachers had over his employment prospects. Perhaps he figured he shouldn't really antagonize Sir, who at that stage still tolerated Denham's brinkmanship.

One final WARNING: the cinematography just might blow you away as you watch stills of Sir's students flash by, interrupting a decision he has to make. `So long as we learn, it doesn't matter WHO teaches us, does it?', remarked a colleague in the teachers' lounge when he first started. If you can stand this scene without it almost breaking your heart, then perhaps you've learned that lesson a long time ago. 10/10.by lizziebeth-1, Sydney, Australia

*http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062376/reviews?start=10

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