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Improbable Is Word for ‘Staircaselt;lt;Up the Down Staircase” is a most improbable film about an improbable age group in an improbable city.Currently on view at the Paramount and at the Northern Drive - In, “Staircase” is improbable because it is basically untruthful, but, paradoxically, it leaves a final impression of almost-honesty.The film tells the story of a young female English teacher on her first job — in a New York City slum high school. It follows her through her first semester’s adventures as she tries to cope with the red tape, the bureaucratic inefficiency, the hopelessness and the helplessness of ghetto adolescence.THE TROUBLE IS, the picture drawn is dishonest because it doesn’t really try to understand how the children of poverty are essentially different from their more affluent brothers and sisters. Instead, it caters to the comfortable middle-class stereotypes that the foibles of the poor are the same as those of “average” people, only more so.Thus, “Staircase's” classroom Is improbably integrated, both as to character types and by races. There are the Negroes, the Puerto Ricans, the Italians, the Irish, the Jews, and there isthe class cut-up, the withdrawn. Much of the acting is by ama-boy, the apple-polisher, and the teurs. and it shows it. Solidtough guy with a head on his ^fomances were turned in u /r, . , by Patrick Bedford as the am-shoulders (Remember Sidney bigiaoijs love interest, and byPoitier in “Blackboard Jun- Roy Poole as a stern, thoughgle”?)THE STUDENTS are improbably depicted as good kids in high spirits, not seriously scarred by the slums. For example: in the general chaos of the first day, a student informs the teacher that she has not appointed an “early dismissal monitor.” She does so immediately, whereupon the monitor calls out “early dismissal” and everybody runs out of the room.sympathetic, disciplinarian.SANDY DENNIS, who playedIf this were the Marx Brothers, the ploy would have been hilarious, but as a semi-serious - though exaggerated — sociological treatise, it is misleading. It ignores the hatred, the viciousness and squalidness of the subjects.Despite this compromising, though, the film succeeds at least partially because it resists the Hollywood temptation to wrap up all the sub-plots in one neat sentimental package at the end. The teacher scores only one solid — though improbable — success at the end, while several other main threads simply don’t get unwound.♦♦the leading role, is difficult to assess, because of her completely stylized gestures and mannerisms. There’s no doubt, though, that at one or two points she manages to inject a quiet but intense desperation into her eyes and voice.In terms of execution, thefilm’s greatest asset is the veryeven and nearly faultless screenplay by Tad Mosel, based on Bel Kaufman’s best-selling novel of the same name. Robert Mulligan’s directing was for the most part uninspired, as was the color photography.A final improbability: Even in “good” schools, teachers justdon’t turn their backs completely on their students towrite on the blackboard. In “Blackboard Jungle” — an inferior picture, but one with alower class point of view —Glenn Ford nearly gets brained with a baseball when be tries that trick.PIJTR.S.FA.323
Newspaper Details
Phoenix Arizona Republic
Phoenix, Arizona, US
Sat, Jul 15, 1967
Page 101
Full Page
Clipped by
Rotten T.
USA 30 Jun 2022
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