Up the Down Staircase

Screenplay by Tad Mosel (winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, 1961, for his play All The Way Home) adapted from the novel by Bel Kaufman; Directed by Robert Mulligan (To Kill a Mockingbird).


An interesting film to re-visit, or visit as the case may be. 1967: in the words of Charles Dickens, so memorably probed in this film, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Youthful unrest, Vietnam, racism, the Summer of Love. It is inevitable that comparisons with To Sir With Love, released the same year, will be made. Directed by Robert Mulligan from a best-selling novel by Bel Kaufman, Up the Down Staircase lacks the sweep of To Sir With Love and the benefit of the latter’s memorable title song, and is a bit clunkier, its seams showing at times. But with its emphasis placed more squarely on relationships and less on issues, it is also less dated and less obvious in making its points.

Sandy Dennis plays Sylvia Barrett , an inner-city school teacher fresh out of college whose dissertation was, as a fellow teacher guesses, on Chaucer. Dennis, a year after her triumph in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, does what few actors can do – she plays a seemingly fragile creature who has mountains of strength within her. It is not a question of vulnerability or power; it is simply a matter of bravery: to face the world, no matter what, and be as strong as one can be. A certain determination, and a balancing act that few other actresses are capable of. Sissy Spacek and Sandra Bullock come to mind, and perhaps Scarlett Johanssen. Dennis utilizes some of the same mannerisms seen in Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf?: the sweet girlish smile; the tucking of her bottom lip under her top teeth; the averted eyes. Such mannerisms come close to affectation but Dennis keeps them in check, just enough to make them seem natural actions for this character, part of what made Dennis such a unique and effective actress.

Jean Stapleton has a small role, very small unfortunately; she gets to shine for only one small moment in one short scene but it’s enough to remind older viewers of the joys she brought to Edith Bunker in the classic sit-com All in the Family. Those were the days.

The film has some loose ends, most notably a sub-plot involving Alice, a student who attempts suicide and who is not seen again; most unfortunate, not only for the great scene addressing the suicide attempt that could/should have been between her and Sandy Dennis, but for the simple joys of the actress playing Alice, Ellen O’Mara, a rather plain-looking but extraordinarily appealing young woman whose only other major work listed on IMDB.com is an appearance in a two-part episode of the detective show Kojak.

Up the Down Staircase screened at the Lincoln Center’s Walter Reader Theater as part of its “American Auteurs: Robert Mulligan” series. Read about that series at the Walter Reade web site.

Review written by Mike Fishman.