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.

My Own Prejudices: Pride and Prejudice, 1940

I think any girl from the ages of fourteen to twenty-five probably at some point traverses across the romantic literary terrain of Pride and Prejudice and quickly becomes infatuated. You read the book, you watch Colin Firth in that wet shirt and then you find out Jane Austen died alone and single and you get really depressed and have some ice cream. You also eventually develop your own prejudices about what constitutes a good Darcy just like there are debates about who makes the best Bond: some people like Sean Connery's suaveness, some people prefer Roger Moore's easy wit and then there's always some idiot that tries to persuade you Timothy Dalton was the best. So, for me Colin Firth is my Darcy. So, I was curious when I read that Colin Firth was first intimidated by the part because Laurence Olivier had done it. I don't know a lot about Laurence Olivier except that I couldn't make it through Othello because of the blackface. Okay, moving on.

The 1940 edition of Pride and Prejudice is directed by Robert Z. Leonard and seriously, Brave New World's Aldous Huxley is one of the writers. Seriously. Laurence Olivier stars as Mr. Darcy and Greer Garson is Elizabeth Bennet. Let's face it, we don't really care about any of the other characters. I'm sure Jane is nice and all but let's face it, we don't care. Darcy is somehow less of a jerk, which somehow makes him less appealing. I know everyone is going to end up in therapy because of that one. This Darcy kind of comes off like a wimp and I don't even want Elizabeth to end up with him. I just stopped caring. Also, I hate to sound like a bitch, but I think Greer Garson may just be too pretty to be Elizabeth Bennet. I know, awful, but to me Elizabeth Bennet is the romantic heroine of the bookworm girl. She's smart, she's not ugly, but Greer Garson is pretty enough to be a cinema star. (No offense, Jennifer Ehle. Any woman that gets to be the girlfriend of Colin Firth and James Purefoy is my hero. The latter is a reference to Bedrooms and Hallways, which has its own Jane Austen moment.) Meanwhile, there are some changes made that I hate. If you've seen the 2005 version, you know that they compressed some of the plot. Well, this movie is even shorter. So this version is even more compressed. No trip to Pemberley and the scandal with Lydia gets wrapped up in about the same five minutes that Jane and Bingley get together, then Elizabeth and Darcy get together. Also, the whole thing with Lady Catherine? Instead of her being an actual snob, Lady Catherine visits Elizabeth and treats her badly just to make sure she's not a gold digger. Really. I could have forgiven the random archery scene if we had not had that. I think we probably have some studio head of the Golden Age to blame for that one. "Yeah, but how do we know Elizabeth just doesn't like Darcy for his money?"

So, I didn't like this one. I'll go back to my miniseries on DVD. Meanwhile, a clip from Bedrooms and Hallways.