Mike_Yike Review of Tea and Sympathy

Tea and Sympathy (1956)

A Movie With Attitudes That Reflect The Mid 1950s

[6/10 · 10 July 2023]

I watched Tea and Sympathy recently on TCM. I knew nothing about it other than it got pretty good reviews. The plot's location was a boarding school for young men. The story focused on one student, Tom, who had effeminate mannerisms and interests, or so it was perceived by the other characters in the movie. The result was a sensitive young man ridiculed by the other students and adults. Throughout the film, the general goal by all the characters, was to transform Tom into a young man with more masculine traits. The boarding house resident houseparents, a married couple played by Deborah Kerr and Lief Erickson, had two different philosophies on how to go about changing Tom into a more conventional young man. The Kerr character believed the best approach was sympathy and compassion, the Erickson philosophy was a more "tough love" approach.

If Tea and Sympathy were made 30 years later than it was, the plot would have been radically different. Tom would have been gay rather than an effeminate heterosexual. The plotline would have been about changing the mindset of the other characters into the philosophy that no two humans are alike, and those differences need not be vanquished but rather they should be respected.

So, anyway, for me, Tea and Sympathy's significance was as a trip back into bygone mid 20th century social sentiments as opposed to that of a valued social statement. Not a bad movie, but not what it once was intended to be.