“In a remote, poverty-stricken Maori village in the mid-1930s, a headmaster's wife escapes into her music and art to ease the frustrations and difficulties of teaching her Maori charges. Much to her delight, her pupils respond to her piano-playing, sculpting, and drawing. Thus, the revolutionary teaching methods of Sylvia Ashton-Warner are born. The school system authorities take a dim view of her success, and the battle commences between an imperious Sylvia and the powers-that-be of academia. Acclaimed for its fresh and unstereotyped characterizations, Sylvia is more than another story of a teacher struggling to educate the ignorant. The screenplay raises issues of Western culture imposing on indigenous cultures, and of status-quo, masculine resistance to feminine innovation. Firth's direction is subtle and realistic in its treatment of sensitive topics such as Sylvia's mental breakdown, her flirtation with a married school teacher, her near-physical involvement with a female doctor, and the effects her obsession had on her family life. Eleanor David as Sylvia is compelling and fallibly human. As for the rest of the cast, Andrew Sarris claimed that ‘the interacting performances of the four principals are nothing short of breathtaking.'” Sally Syberg
Selected for The Museum of Modern Art's New Directors/New Films '85.