Educating Rita. 1983. UK. Directed by Lewis Gilbert. Screenplay Willy Russell, based on his play. With Michael Caine, Julie Walters. 35mm courtesy the George Eastman Museum. 110 min.
Having played many an old soak in his career, Michael Caine was never so heartbreakingly convincing than as the burnt-out Frank Bryant, a paunchy, shambolic English professor who ostensibly teaches Rita, a street-smart hairdresser from the hard-knock side of Liverpool, to get more out of life. Reuniting with director Lewis Gilbert, who put him on the map with Alfie, Caine had the grace to give Julie Walters her star turn from stage to screen while also taking his own role quite seriously: “While there are elements of Pygmalion in [Educating Rita],” he later observed, “...I based my performance not on Professor Higgins but on Emil Jannings’ role as the professor who loves Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel.” An admiring Pauline Kael wrote that “Rita is Julie Walters’ role in the way that Billie Dawn in Born Yesterday was Judy Holliday’s role. The material isn’t sustained—Rita, like Billie Dawn, is inevitably less entertaining after she’s transformed—but Caine gives a master film actor’s performance. You can see the professor’s impotence in his pink-rimmed, blurry eyes; he’s crumbling from within. Caine lets nothing get between you and the character. You don’t observe his acting; you just experience the character’s emotions. You feel his smirking terror.”