Up the Down Staircase

It is a time capsule to 1967. This movie was released about the time that I was born, and it gave me a window into this time period. It is very entertaining and shows how typical lives can be worth watching. The movie's greatest feat is that it shows us that we really need to be nice to each other because we don't know what the people we're dealing with are going through.

Movie is not what I thought it would be. Realistic, you are there 1967 inner city school and surrounding low income neighborhoods. Strong commited performance by Sandy Dennis as she tries to reach her students, and fight an educational system that has given up on the kids. Movie pushes all the right emotional buttons.

So not worth 02 hours: and 04 minutes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Accurate depiction of what teaching is really like. Great performances.

Can a new school teacher have an impact in the toughest of schools? Inspirational and authentic.

Sandy Dennis becomes a star in this

Probably, the best film about a teacher struggling to earn respect among its students and get them to like and to live the subject she teaches. A slight shade of 1970s idealism spoils the overall impression.

Well made, well acted drama of a young teacher's struggle to adapt to a tough inner city school. Some of the sheen has worn off the topicality of the issue since there have been many versions of it but this is a fine rendering of the tale. Sandy Dennis is perfectly cast in the lead.

A film that presents present day challenges that were also hot-button in the late 1960's. Sandy Dennis presents her role with an understated, passive grace that benefits her strongly in the role, and the hidden enthusiasm of the other students is a mark to society that children really do care about their education.A wonderful film with many gems of wisdom that will make you think. I give this film 5 out of 5 stars.

The first major film to put a chirpy/quirky spin on the 'tough school' genre first defined by 1955's "Blackboard Jungle." From a 1964 Bel Kaufman novella, born of her keen observations and notebooks while inside the New York City school system. First out on DVD in late 2007; WB's DVD transfer quality is surprisingly high. Sandy Dennis slips easily into her role as naive break-in teacher at fictional Coolidge High. Coolidge's foremost problem is that it's more an impotent bureaucracy than any kind of institution of learning, with many of its teachers and administrators bunkered well inside silos built of complex, needless paperwork. Along the way Dennis encounters a variety of now-predictable scenarios: student abused by parent, punk takes compassion as come-on, student crush on teacher (and vice-versa), student without parent or home. Dennis truly excels at her subtle revealing of the character's emotions as she navigates and eventually finds port within such choppy waters. Perhaps the film's scenarios are no revelation today, but it surely jolted 1967 viewers reared amidst the cornfields of Iowa. As a once NYC public school student, I know there is validity in the notions this film sets out to portray. Two-foot-wide red centerlines down each hall ensured only counter-clockwise flow of students. Classroom order was the only goal for many instructors; one Spanish teacher told endless macabre tales to mesmerize, skinning his neighbor's cats alive was but one of them. The Principal was unknown by sight; only his voice booming through the classroom speaker boxes was familiar. Truants went undetected for months until the paperwork caught up to them. And there's a strong concordance between this film and many of my personal experiences while teaching within 'a high-need urban high school.' These situations cannot be so much improved decades later. Accordingly, I find this film is still well recommended immersion for those considering K-12 teaching as 'a profession.'