To Sir, with Love

To Sir, with Love (1967) is a British drama directed by James Clavell — watch it online on iFILM. Sidney Poitier stars as Mark Thackeray, a Guyanese engineer who can't find work in his field and accepts a teaching post at a rough secondary school in London's East End, planning to leave the moment something better comes along.

The class is a wall of hostility at first. Thackeray scraps the standard curriculum and starts treating his students like adults — teaching them how to behave in the world rather than drilling them on dates. It works, slowly. Judy Geeson and Suzy Kendall head a strong young cast, and pop singer Lulu appears both on screen and on the soundtrack, delivering the title song that became a No. 1 hit on both sides of the Atlantic.

Released the same year as Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, the film arrived at the height of civil rights debates in Britain and the US. It was a surprise box-office triumph for Columbia Pictures. Stream To Sir, with Love (1967) online on iFILM.