Up the Down Staircase (1967)

Up the Down Staircase
Directed by Robert Mulligan
Tad Mosel from the novel by Bel Kaufman
1967/US
Park Place Production
First viewing?/Amazon Instant

[box] [Frequently Over Intercom] Mrs. Finch: Disregard all bells.[/box]

Loved the book.  Not so keen on the movie.

It is Sylvia Barrett’s (Sandy Dennis) first year as a high-school English teacher.  She happens to wind up in an inner city (though mostly white) school with the most baroque bureaucracy outside the U.S. Civil Service.  The kids are initially resistant to her idealism.  A bad boy mistakes her interest in him as a come-on.  A sensitive girl is driven off the deep end by her unrequited crush on a male teacher.  It is not a spoiler to say that Ms. Barrett wins the hearts and minds of her scholars, if not of the school administration. With Eileen Heckart as a fellow teacher and Jean Stapleton as a Ms. Finch, the principal’s secretary.

The least attractive costume in cinema history?

What made the book so good was its frequent inclusion of hilarious memos from the management. This has necessarily been stripped out of much of the movie, leaving the melodrama intact.  But what really got to me was all the speechifying.  By this I mean that Dennis breaks out in ponderous statements on the meaning of life at the drop of a hat and interpretations of literature that made me roll my eyes.  Nobody, but nobody, talks like this.

By far my favorite part of the movie was when Eileen Heckart danced the boogaloo with a student.  And a creditable job she did too!

Interestingly, Sandy Dennis tied for Best Actress at the Moscow International Film Festival.