"Educating Rita" (1983) - Sculptures of Limitation Quiz

Answer: Professor

Dr. Bryant is quite unorthodox and refers to himself as an "appalling teacher". He at first does not want to take Rita on as a student. She, however, is very convincing and talks him into it after she declares he looks like a "geriatric hippie".

Answer: Hairdresser

She works as a hairdresser in the beginning of the movie, but in the second half she works as a waitress in a bistro. Her husband is not keen on the idea of her becoming a student. He thinks she should be a traditional wife and mother without aspirations of being successful in other fields.

Answer: She is on birth control.

Upon discovering this, Denny burns Rita's books and essay. Rita says she does not want to have a baby until she has "choice". This disagreement leads to a divorce between Rita and Denny. This does not turn out to be a total disaster as Rita moves on with her education while Denny finds a wife willing to have a family with him.

Answer: The Lost Weekend

How appropriate. The 1944 novel by Charles R. Jackson is about the drinking binge of a would-be writer. Dr. Bryant declares to Rita that he used to write poetry but no longer does so since his wife left him.

Answer: Oscar Wilde

This quote is from the play "The Importance of Being Earnest".

Rita is a great success at summer school and returns more educated than ever. She studies Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Anton Chekhov, and William Blake.

Answer: On the radio

She writes: "In attempting to resolve the staging difficulties in a production of Ibsen's "Peer Gynt", I would present it on the radio. Because as Ibsen himself says, he wrote it as a play for voices never intending it to go on in a theater. If they had had the radio in his day, that is where he would have done it."

Willy Russell adapted "Educating Rita" for radio, performed in 2009 on BBC radio 4.

Answer: Mahler

Rita says she likes Trish because she's "dead classy". Trish at first appears to be very refined and cultured. She and Rita become fast friends and Rita begins working in the bistro which Trish operates. Trish loudly declares at one point: "Mahler! Wouldn't you just die without him?!"

Later in the film, Trish tries to commit suicide.

Answer: Lawn of university

Dr. Bryant wakes up most of the staff at the university yelling for "Bursar". The Bursar tells him to go to bed and he falls asleep on the lawn. After this final incident of Dr. Bryant's confrontations with his students and associates, he is sent to Australia for a two year holiday.

Mr. "Tyger" Tyson drives a Volkswagen van that many students ride around in consuming bottles of booze.

Answer: Dress and haircut

Frank says he bought the dress for "an educated woman friend of mine". Rita says all she has ever done is take from him. But, she does give him a haircut...which she promised to do upon their very first meeting.

Answer: Rose

"O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy."

Rita recites this poem flawlessly upon returning from summer school. At this point Dr. Bryant begins to see that Rita is becoming very educated and perhaps could even be seen as an equal. This leads to a falling out between them that ends in the final scene. They both go their separate (but happy) ways on new adventures that were mutually inspired by one another.