We value Lewis Gilbert for his care with actors and his interest in working-class lives. Educating Rita is worth an evening, but its unevenness shows how much energy his performers sometimes have to supply.
Fi1m perspective
In Educating Rita (1983), Julie Walters keeps a lesson alive by making us believe she needs to learn. Opposite Michael Caine’s disappointed professor, her curiosity is too pressing for the exchanges to become merely a succession of put-downs. We cared about Rita because Walters makes that wish to learn matter even when Willy Russell’s screenplay settles for an easy laugh. Lewis Gilbert gives the actors careful attention, but he does not always give their scenes enough pace.
War films such as Reach for the Sky (1956) came before the international attention of Alfie (1966). Then came three James Bond films between 1967 and 1979, including You Only Live Twice (1967) and The Spy Who Loved Me (1977). By Educating Rita and Shirley Valentine (1989), stage adaptations had become a focus of his later work. Those changes of scale suggest a practical director, willing to adjust to the kind of entertainment at hand.
Gilbert often adapted plays and novels with Vernon Harris. Harris was a long-term collaborator as writer and script editor. The direct-to-camera address in Alfie and Shirley Valentine, the latter with Pauline Collins, gives the central character a particularly direct way of reaching us. Yet Educating Rita shows that preserving a strong central voice is only part of adapting a play. The supporting subplots keep interrupting Rita and her professor without giving us anyone comparably interesting to watch.
Frank Watts’s photography in Educating Rita is serviceable, rarely telling us anything about Rita and her professor that the dialogue has not supplied. Garth Craven’s editing keeps their exchanges clear but cannot prevent the subplots from breaking our concentration. Gilbert’s care is evident, though we cannot call that a virtue whenever a scene drags. The film remains likeable because Walters and Caine make its central relationship worth the time spent away from it. Start with Educating Rita for Walters and Caine, and be patient when Gilbert leaves them for the supporting cast.
Biography
Lewis Gilbert (1920–2018) was an English film director, producer and screenwriter. He directed more than 40 films over six decades, beginning with war documentaries and low-budget features in the 1940s and 1950s before moving to larger productions.
He is known for the war films Reach for the Sky (1956), Sink the Bismarck! (1960) and Carve Her Name with Pride (1958), the comedies Alfie (1966), Educating Rita (1983) and Shirley Valentine (1989), and three James Bond films: You Only Live Twice (1967), The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and Moonraker (1979). Gilbert also produced Educating Rita. He was appointed CBE in 1997 and received a BFI Fellowship in 2001.
