The Contemporary School Film (1970–)

Abstract

The comforts of Ross’ Goodbye, Mr. Chips spawned no re-evaluative lineage; instead a clutch of murderous public school-set films were ‘greenlit’ by the internecine If….. The first, Walk a Crooked Path (John Brason, July 1970), a convoluted but capable crime film set in a boys’ boarding school, shows the deteriorating childless marriage of staid long-serving senior housemaster John Hemming (Tenniel Evans) and his wealthy but ambitious—and strong-drinking—wife Elizabeth (Faitih Brook) to be further exacerbated when he is passed over for the position of headmaster. When Hemming is subsequently accused of assault by sixth-former Philip Dreaper (Clive Endersby), poisonous school gossip makes Elizabeth drive drunkenly away to a fatal car crash. Though Hemming is cleared and has plenty of female interest, he still hands in his resignation: the ‘assault’ is revealed to be a plan, engineered by teacher and pupil, to encourage Elizabeth’s suicide and inherit her money. Hemming seeks to retain Dreaper’s company, but the pupil’s financial demands lead to an acrimonious split. While Walk a Crooked Path can appear to be cashing in on the violent public school atmosphere of If…., it emerged from a series of production problems beginning in 1966. The final version of a twice-abandoned project may recall Mr. Perrin and Mr. Traill with its machinations of bored and isolated masters’ wives and The Browning Version for its late emotional awakening, but the most apposite school film comparison is with The Children’s Hour (William Wyler, 1961) where pupil accusations that their teacher is gay again prove unwittingly accurate. Here the ‘reveal’ explains the plan to remove Elizabeth as subconsciously oriented: when Nancy (Patricia Haines), the games master’s wife who expects to succeed Elizabeth, hears Hemmings describe a past holiday swimming naked with other boys, she realises his newly awakened sexuality and, horrified, abandons him. The melodramatic denouement, with Hemming alone in his ill-gotten house as the image shifts to black and white, fed Stephen Bourne’s condemnation of ‘a truly reprehensible and depressing film’ which ‘appears to be a warning to gay men in 1970 to watch out, especially those who think they may have found “freedom” after the passing of the 1967 [Sexual Offences] Act’ (1996: 223–4). The trade press—with a far different parti pris—also found it all ‘a somewhat depressing affair’ and wondered ‘if one can accept this as a remotely possible condition in a better class school’ before sympathising with ‘the long-suffering husband’ who ‘could almost be excused his actions with such a nagging and depressing wife’ (Kine Weekly, 18 July 1970).