The Top Ten School Films
By Joe Boden
16th September 2009

September is here, and the air is tinged by the disappointment of every boy and girl aged between five and twenty. Yes, it’s back to school time, and to celebrate – or rather to lift our spirits – I’ve decided to put together a list of the ten best school films. And no, that isn’t the best ten films that we’re all shown when our history teachers decide they don’t want to put together a lesson (and if it was, “Saving Private Ryan”, “Schindler’s List”, and the mini-series “Roots” would top almost everyone’s list), this is a list of the best ten films that are set in a school, college, or university, or use one of said academic organizations as the drive or catalyst for their plot. I ruled out some of the more tenuous links to school, like Claude Chabrol’s “Le Boucher”, Godard’s “Bande a Part”, and Albert Lamorisse’s “the Red Balloon”, and I think the final ten are linked fairly strongly to the “best time of our lives” ™. And so, without any further ado, here’s the list;

10. Ferris Beuller’s Day Off (John Hughes)
It seems odd that I should start a list of the ten best school films with a film about staying away from the place, but that’s how it goes, and I’m sure no one would begrudge the inclusion of Hughes’ – who past away very recently – most famous film. “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” is about the joys of bunking off, which is a little bit of a morally bereft sentiment, but the charms of the lead characters more than pull it through. It’s funny from start to finish, with some truly sublime sequences (the parade is certainly a highlight), but it’s Matthew Broderick’s wily charms as the popular bad boy that make Bueller the classic that it’s regarded as today.

9. The 400 Blows (Francois Truffaut)
The only reason that Truffaut’s debut feature film is this low on the list is because the school sequences are not the crux of the film, and only serve to amplify the neglect and alienation of its lead character, Jean Pierre Leaud’s Antoine Doinel. However, Truffaut’s school sequences are brilliant in achieving their aim, turning what could have been one of the few safe havens Antoine has into an equally hellish den of neglect.

8. The Rules of Attraction (Roger Avery)
There’s no doubt in my mind that the book which Avery’s film is based on, “the Rules of Attraction” by the peerless Bret Easton Ellis, is far better than his movie, but Avery has still done a stand-up job of converting a wordy, internalized piece of prose into a thematic feature. It’s a satire on American college life, with three central characters who jump from bed to bed, doing drugs, and drinking far too much. Ellis has said that Avery’s film is the best re-construction of his world on celluloid, and although I disagree completely, “the Rules of Attraction” is still a hard-hitting film with brilliant direction and three fantastic central performances.

7. Kes (Ken Loach)
The film that Ken Loach’s reputation all-but lives on is doubtlessly “Kes”, his gentile but tragic story of a young boy’s affection for his pet kestrel. However, the best segments come in the scenes within the school, where Billy (played excellently by David Bradley) goes from apathetic teachers to bullying students, unable to make any real connection. The best scene in the film, in fact, comes when Billy and three other students wait on their punishments, wondering if they’ll get off lightly, or even at all.

6. Zero for Conduct (Jean Vigo)
Vigo’s penultimate film, set in a boarding school somewhere in France, is one of his two renowned masterpieces, and the main influence on the film that charts in this list at number one. It’s a sublime film, and although it only stands at forty minutes long, it’s still a towering thematic piece with true emotion and some beautiful performance. Beautifully capturing the angst and the playfulness of the youthful generation, Vigo’s film would be overshadowed by his 1934 masterpiece “L’Atalante”, but time has served “Zero for Conduct” well. Nowadays, it sits right up there with his feature length classic as prime exhibits for why Vigo’s death was one of the greatest tragedies to ever hit the filmic world.

5. The Breakfast Club (John Hughes)
Only in a cult top ten could “the Breakfast Club”, John Hughes’ comedy drama about five stereotypes living out a detention sentence in an American high school on a Saturday, chart one place higher than Jean Vigo’s “Zero for Conduct”. But hey, Hughes’ film does a fine job in reaching its objective, and providing key insight into the high school clique system. It proves that stereotypes are all but irrelevant, and that there are a few human traits that defy pigeon holing. It’s also brilliantly funny, and features some cracking performances from Judd Nelson, Mollie Ringwald, and Anthony Michael Hall.

4. Bad Education (Pedro Almodovar)
Almodovar’s film spends under twenty minutes on the school segment, which in turn are only fictional re-tellings of, urm, fictional events, but they are still the best scenes in the film. Not only are they a stern and powerful condemnation of child abuse and abuse of power, but they also speak universal truths about friendship, comradeship, and the joys of cinema. There’s no denying that Almodovar has made better films, with “Talk to Her” and “All About My Mother” sticking their proverbial hands up immediately, but I’m unsure if he’s shot a sequence better than this one.

3. Where is the Friend’s Home? (Abbas Kiarostami)
Abbas Kiarostami’s film is undoubtedly a brilliant piece of cinema, speaking about childhood, determination, friendship, and innocence, but the two most important scenes actually book end the film. They are the sequences in the school classroom, where the children lose all of their sparks, no longer playful and buoyant adventurers, but instead reduced to numbers, waiting for their teacher to part with his knowledge. It’s not a condemnation of school, as such, but of conventional learning and of social order. Not only this, but these two scenes are also incredibly emotional, particularly the later one, where the lead character defies convention and cements a bond of friendship.

2. Elephant (Gus Van Sant)
How could “Elephant”, Gus Van Sant’s intelligent, Satantango-esque retelling of the Columbine murders, not make this list? Not only is it technically incredible, with virtuoso direction that includes some truly immense tracking shots, but it’s also one of the most emotional films ever made. The power of the events is enough to bring out tears, but Van Sant’s careful handling of such events allows them to steer clear of cliché, resulting in a film that feels wholly original. It may just be the best serial killer film of all time, too, simply because it makes real efforts to dive into the psyche of the killers. But it’s true message lies in its displays of how easily this tragedy occurred, and how easily it could occur again.

1. If…. (Lindsay Anderson)
It’s a common misconception, one that I myself have fallen victim to on a few occasions during my early filmite years, that Malcolm MacDowell’s greatest performance came in Stanley Kubrick’s dystopian crime epic, “A Clockwork Orange”. In fact, he’s ten times better in Lindsay Anderson’s “If….”, a film about a boarding school where the teachers reign supreme and the students do as they’re told. It’s really an attack on social order and a call for revolution, with Anderson channelling his inner rebel to create a film that is both powerful and entertaining. Its climax, which has since become iconic, is perhaps the most powerful and fruitful call to arms ever put on film; after all, it was screened first in France in May of 1968.