Back to School Movies

Lights! Camera! Learning!
The best school movies ever made

by Beth Rowen

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Sir Laurence Olivier's classic Hamlet

With school bells set to ring in only a matter of days, it's time for students to shift into back-to-school mode. What better way to ease them into the transition than some edutainment in the form of filmed literary classics and biographies? Here are the films we think best depict our national heroes, or work as well in celluloid as they do on the page. The list also exposes students to some of film's classic gems that they might not otherwise see.

Some of these films will likely turn up as assigned reading during the school year. We don't mean to suggest, of course, that students watch movies instead reading the books; but it never hurts to have a little supplemental material.

Shakespeare on the Silver Screen