Back To School Special: Goodbye, Mr. Chips, 1939

For my second Back To School Special, I have selected a film that also takes place in England, but this time on the right side of the tracks and also has a comma in the title. Goodbye, Mr. Chips is really one of those films that pleasantly surprises you. The first time I saw it was last TCM Oscar festival. See it had the misfortune of coming out the same year as Gone With The Wind , so it doesn't quite have the same clout on the imagination, though Robert Donat did win an Oscar for his performance and it's well earned considering the versatility he has to show in this film, showing us Chips throughout his life. I was thinking seriously, what is this crap? Then I started watching it and realized yeah, it's like that episode of Doctor Who where the Doctor is back in 1913 and he's teaching at a boys' school and he's human but he has dreams about being the Doctor. Oddly enough, the YouTube clips for that episode are much better than the ones for this movie. That's actually as close as I can get to showing you the start of this movie without showing you like twenty minutes of it. Just the boys don't seem to be jackasses in this movie. So that kept me watching long enough to realize what a truly special film this is. Robert Donat plays the titular Mr. Chips. We see him in flashback starting out as a Master in his first year at Brookfield School, a British boys' boarding school that dates back to 1492 and boasts such alumni as Sir Francis Drake. He goes in eager to be the boys' friend, but soon finds he has to use harsh discipline to teach them. He is an effective teacher, but he is lonely and laments that he can never have a real impact on the boys the way that the other masters seem to. This is heartbreakingly evident when he's passed over to be master of his own house because he doesn't seem to have the same ease with the boys. His friend a German Master takes him for a visit to his homeland of Austria, where he falls in love with Katherine played by Greer Garson. Katherine turns out to be just the change he needs and helps him become friends with the boys by hosting tea at their house every Sunday. Oh, she also gives him the nickname Chips. Everything is going incredibly well, he gets his own house, they're expecting a baby and of course, she dies. Because this is always what happens in the 1800s. There's a very touching scene where the boys discover this and they all silently try to carry on. We see the passage of time through the montage of boys giving their names, discussing events, their dress slightly changing and I have to say it's about as good a montage as there ever was. We cut next to Chips being asked to retire because he's too set in his ways for the school and his pupils coming to his rescue. He then retires, but is called back to be headmaster when World War I breaks out. I love it because he gets everything he set out for, just not in the way he expected it, We see him on his deathbed, colleagues lamenting how lonely his life must have been. He corrects him, saying he's had thousands of children, all of them boys. This clip is like ten minutes long so just fast forward. It really is a skillful film, utilizing the montage and the cuts through time in a striking way. Greer Garson is really great in this as the love of Chips' life, I much prefer her in this to Pride & Prejudice. I stand by my assessment of that film. Questions, comments, concerns? Let me know.