Educating Rita

Director: Lewis Gilbert

1983

31 March 2025

See

Rita (Julie Walkters) is a working class woman in her mid-twenties who wants more from her life than her job as a hair stylist and husband who wants a baby can give. She needs options and decides to get a university education, Dr. Frank Bryant (Michael Caine) is her tutor and is going through his changes. 

Think

Lewis Gilbert previous directed Caine in the original Alfie, and like the first Magic Mike movie which Steven Sodeberg showed the sadness of sexiness of one dimensional alpha males (before the next two movies celebrated it, missing the point entirely, but I watched them like anybody who enjoys eye candy and the occasional basic bitch guilty pleasure to switch off rather than pay attention, but I digress). Frank is struggling good naturedly through a divorce and his next relationshit by drinking himself silly to keep going while cheeky and cheerful. He wanted to be a poet and ended up a disappointed professor. 

But it’s Rita who is the force majeure of the film. Frank wants her to be herself. She doesn’t want to be that person anymore, and so goes the Pygmalion tale (Educating Rita was originally a stage play) of Frank moulding Rita’s mind through literature. First a fish out of water, scared of making faux pas’s and coming across uncouth, she slowly adapts to her new environment by making her way through the reading material. Putting aside the pulpy pageturners for Howard’s End at first. Then progressing to Chekhov, and finally Blake. Throughout she changes styles, company, jobs, but the two remain each others constant companions and confidants. 

Feel

Is Frank in love with Rita, or her capacity to reinvent. Her enthusiasm for life is infectious as she’s portrayed wondrously by Walters as hapless, not helpless. The changes she goes through leave their mark on her, most notably at summer school away from Frank she makes her way. Recounting to him with voice over to flashbacks of reading American poetry and when asked about it learns to listen rather than reply with a quick quip. Until she finds a truer voice to speak up with, and contribute meaningfully in a lecture hall. The grace with which she handles seing her ex Denny (Malcolm Douglas) and both their new chapters was touching. As was Frank’s invitation when he’s finally ready to change too. How could you not want a sculpture that keeps sculpting itself?