Twelve years after snarling his way through a New York education as a student in The Blackboard Jungle, Sidney Poitier graduated to the chalkface here. He plays a teacher in London's East End who tries to motivate his surly pupils to become responsible citizens. Director James Clavell's adaptation of ER Braithwaite's novel is a soft-centred affair and is probably best remembered for Lulu singing the title song, though Judy Geeson gives a credible performance as a lovelorn pupil. It may be on the naive side, but it still became one of the year's top box-office hits.

A British Guianese engineer starts a job as a high school teacher in London’s East End, where his uninterested and delinquent pupils are in desperate need of attention and care.