WHY SHOOT THE TEACHER?
Canada, 1976, 99 minutes, Colour.
Bud Cort, Samantha Eggar, Chris Wiggins, Gary Reineke.
Directed by Silvio Narizzano
Why Shoot The Teacher? Though featuring Bud Cort, the wide-eyed boyish lead of Harold and Maude, and Samantha Eggar in a good, though somewhat melodramatic role, and directed by Canadian international film-maker Silvio Narizzano (Georgy Girl), this is a Canadian production, cast and crew and a strong flavour of the frozen isolated central plains in winter. While the plot is another version of the inexperienced teacher facing difficult children and circumstances with mutual winning over, the tone is strong sentiment and a feel for hardship, the needs of country children and parents and, of course, of aspiring teachers. It is also set in the Depression, 1935. While nothing new, it is offered with vigour.
1. An entertaining drama? A glimpse of Canadian history? Focus on education? The blending of these themes?
2. The Canadian production qualities? The stars? The technical credits? The atmosphere of Canada and its flavour?
3. The importance of the Depression 1935 setting? The opening, Max's experience and story? The atmosphere of lack of work in Canada? The need for jobs? Poverty? The importance of the train ride and the audience _Journeying to Saskatchewan with Max? The countryside, the train trip? The landscapes? The importance of winter, snow, the flat plains? The blizzards? The coldness of spring? The isolation of the Canadian plains? The audience feeling the cold of this Depression winter?
4. The focus on the country school - its place in the education system, the various grades all being in the same classroom, the range of syllabus and the one teacher having to cope? The poor facilities? The willingness of the students to learn and the parents to support them? The need for teachers to live in remote places? Teachers and experience and drawing on training? The importance of discipline, creativity? Insight into the work of a teacher, the needs for communication with the children, the processes of learning, discipline? Teachers and their sense of inadequacy?
5. Bud Cort's portrait of Max - young looking, wide-eyed, naive? His telling his story? The train trip and his hopes? Borrowing money from his brother? The initial meal and his trying to feel at home, telling jokes and straining? The coldness of the first night, the hospitality of the family? The long distances and the freezing on the back of the wagon? The toilet and his need to go? The finding of the school? His reaction to the school. his room? His ability to meet the students, the roll-call? His discoveries about each of the children and their families? About himself? The support and lack of support of the community - money, the food, the house, the help? Costs and his needing to build up his salary? The hard line taken by the authorities?
6. Max and his success with the children? In the house on the first night? In meeting them at roll-call? The range of children presented by the screenplay? Age range, class range? Their ordinariness, poverty, hard work? Some being imaginative and responding to his teaching? His disciplining the older boy and humiliating him? His not binging the water? Giving his lunch to the poor children and their father's reaction? The co-operation? The hardships of winter education?
7. Alice as a symbol of a person dissatisfied and out of place? Her telling her story about coming from England and World War One? Her many children? Her love for her husband, yet his brutality, hard work? Her support of Max? The dance and Max's injuries? Her attitude towards her daughter being in the class? Her being oppressed by the winter, the snow? Her running away? Max's welcoming her? The point of their recitation of Noel Coward? Her staying the night but everything being proper? Her husband and his attitude towards taking her back? His judgment of Max? Her disappearing from the film after her husband taking her back? The quality of the portrait of Alice in itself?
8. The portrayal of the various families - the Bishops and the pressures on Max especially as regards his salary? Harris Montgomery and the interest in socialism at the time? His rousing people up? Max and his not wanting to speak? His decision to speak and his failure? The attitudes of the adults, of the children?
9. The women of the town - supplying the food, their presence at the dance, the rallies? The bank turning out the family and its having to move?
10. The detail of the way of life during the winter from school, to social events - and Max in the brawl, to social reform?
11. The visit of the inspector - the children involved in the gopher hunt, the test and their funny answers? The inspector's exasperation? Maxs support of the children? His tirade against the system? The testing of values in the comparisons between Max and the inspector? The influence on Max’s returning again?
12. The audience being invited into a particular community and its way of life, seeing its humanity, its needs? The importance of the historical perspective of the Depression? The credibility of Max's return to teach ?
