SCHOOL TIES
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1992 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: In 1955 an elite New England prep
school recruits a ringer quarterback who happens to be a Jew.
When the secret that he is a Jew leaks out, we get a view of
the "old boy" system and the bigotry beneath the surface.
Rating: low +2 [-4 to +4].
In 1955 St. Matthews is an extremely elite private prep school in New England. Graduate from St. Matthews and you are practically assured that you will make it into an Ivy League college and go on to a distinguished or at least comfortable career. One of the students sums up the philosophy of life at St. Matthews: "We do the things they tell us to and they give us the good life." But there is something that St. Matthews finds most distressing. For three years straight they have lost the big football game to their rival school and the alumni are tired of it. So the school has broken the code. They have let the coach recruit a ringer, a great high school quarterback as well as an excellent scholar even if the boy is, unfortunately, a Jew. But David Greene (played by Brendan Fraser) has been cautioned by his father and his new coach to let his religion remain his little secret.
Where DEAD POETS SOCIETY is about the pressures of posh prep schools and the wondrous joy of learning English literature, SCHOOL TIES is about the pressures and the dark underside of blooming bigotry and the old boy system for preserving class barriers. It is dark in tone, dark in photography, and a much more real film than is DEAD POETS SOCIETY. Greene has been given mixed signals by his father (played by Ed Lauter, cast very counter to type). His father has told him to fit in, but also to maintain his religious traditions. At first, there is little anti-Semitism: a comment here, a joke there. Greene turns out to be a great student and a superb athlete and just the kind of guy that everyone wants to be friends with, including the visiting girls. It is, in fact, a fault of Dick Wolf's or Darryl Ponicsan's script that Greene is just a little too good to be believed. But when tensions do arise through no fault of Greene's and the secret of his religion is revealed, his classmates show their cliquishness and religious bigotry.
Music was provided by Maurice Jarre (and, yes, there is a brief scene of a train). Jarre's score is a bit more somber than his DEAD POETS SOCIETY score. Similarly, the camerawork is also somber and casts a grayish tinge through the film. Photography is by Freddie Francis--perhaps the greatest cinemagraphic stylist alive. His style lets him down only during the football scenes where he uses cliched slow motion and repeated motion. The film is directed by Robert Mandel.
Minor flaws in the script--including the Jewish boy being just a bit too perfect and also an unsatisfying climactic scene--rob what could have been a great film, but still leave a very good film. I rate SCHOOL TIES a low +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
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