Goodbye, Mr. Chips

source: Goodbye, Mr. Chips

Donat's performance is/was spectacular as always and that alone would make this film worth the watch. Hollywood has always had a rough time depicting England. It all turns out to be so terribly, terribly English that it makes fun of the country and its inhabitants without actually intending to do harm. In other words "Ye Olde Englande" according to the American establishment all too often makes the culture look quite silly. Whether part of this is indeed planned or not, it doesn't help out the English cause at the outset of World War II by making the people and their society seem so miserably anachronistic. "Cuddly" isn't a word appropriate to a country soon to be besieged by war. Certainly Hollywood could have done better.

This movie is marvelous and for so many reasons. First, I am a big fan of the novels of James Hilton and this adaptation is more true to his books than most (such as RANDOM HARVEST). Second, the acting and writing is so good it is almost impossible to imagine them being better. Greer Garson and Robert Donat are so perfect together. In fact, Donat's performance was good enough to wrestle away the Oscar from Clark Gable from GONE WITH THE WIND (though I honestly think Gable probably deserved it a little more). This is a story about a confirmed bachelor who is a teacher at a boys prep school. "Mr. Chips" as they call him is very decent but dull--and he's been a fixture at the school for some time. However, quite unexpectedly he meets a woman who pulls him out of his shell and changes his life (Garson). Unfortunately, lovers of happy endings beware--this romance will rip out your heart. Even the most jaded will find themselves pulled into it emotionally. This is a great film through and through. All those associated with this film have done themselves proud.

A warm, pleasant and charming film about how a person changes throughout life, the people one gets to know, the friendships, and the inspiration that one can provide for many others. It is not so much a film that amazes, but rather one that is hard to flaw. The cast is good, but in particular Robert Donat is excellent, playing the title character from youth adulthood to older age. The film manages to capture both the spirit of youth (the schoolboys) and the experience of their teachers, making it a very well rounded film. Together with an excellent makeup job and a good selection of music to fit the film, the overall result is very praiseworthy.

Robert Donat, the dashing sexy hero in Hitchcock's "The Thirty Nine Steps", here indulges a tendency to mawkishness in his portrayal of the dusty old schoolmaster which strays shaky foot by shaky foot into caricature. Popular American films of the period tended to emphasise, underline and signpost sentimentality and Donat gamely delivers. Perhaps it was all of a part with the sentimental popular music of the time - cosy and comforting. Hollywood though shortly afterwards produced "Arsenic and Old Lace" - a comedy of a blackness perhaps 30 years ahead of its time - a measure of its then openness and diversity. Michael Palin's "American Friends" (1991) tells a very similar story to "Chips" but with subtlety, intelligence, beauty and a perfect recreation of English university life (in the 1860's). Dusty English schoolmasters are much more intelligently observed and portrayed in "The Browning Version". Robert Donat was both a star and a fine actor (see for example "The Citadel"). There is simply too much schmaltz in Mr Chips.

I can't believe that this film rates as highly as it does - the acting is often second rate or incredibly hammy (or both). The story is over-sentimental clap-trap, very poorly paced and seems to have little point. A teacher teaches for a long time and then dies is hardly worthy of two hours of anyone's time. The subject matter that is touched upon is generally handled badly and the passing of time is unconvincing - from the cliched dropping of significant events into conversation to the poorly realised make-up. Greer Garson is the only saving grace, she does what she's pretty good at and does it well, but after her characters death the film just dies with her.

A couple of sentimental moments are seemingly the sole reason this movie was made. As when Greer Garson adds a welcome, gracious (if improbable) variable into Chips continual confusion. But as far as scripts go the rest of this is tissue held together very loosely. Half an hour into the movie Chips is already lined and wrinkled. What happened to his youth? His courtship takes eons and is just not interesting. He's like Marty in 'Marty,' and dates like that are unlikely to result in marriage to an exquisite, refined babe. The movie (and Chips) treasure the students as interchangeable perfunctory, relationships that make Chips feel good about himself, instead of as individuals who are the protagonists of their own lives. Wouldn't it have been nice if Chips could encounter them as humans, and teach them to love their living, critical minds, so that when a cynical war breaks out (they're all cynical) they could think independently, instead of transforming themselves into fodder? The biggest rebellion he can muster is over how to teach Latin. (?!) The establishment Britishness of this movie is outdated. The movie 'If...' better portrays the whole school system in all it's nastiness; not through the winking acceptance of old age, but in the angry rejection of youth; where one might best be encouraged to spend their energy productively before becoming prematurely old. But no educational system actually nurtures independence. All Chips ever does is uncritically feed the machine that consumes these kids. Later attempts do this whole thing are better.

I noted that IMDb has told us that James Hilton in writing Goodbye Mr. Chips modeled the character out of a former teacher he had at a British public school who had a similar lengthy term of service. It's nice to know that there are people like Chipping actually teaching our future generations out there. Chips is the sort of role that fit Robert Donat and only Robert Donat. I cannot imagine any other actor playing the cerebral and shy schoolteacher. The film follows him for about sixty of the 83 years of his life. He arrives at Brookfield School around 1870, a young idealistic graduate certain of the vocation he has chosen. He doesn't mix well and his pedantic ways don't make him a school favorite. Donat certainly changes when on holiday in Europe with Paul Henreid, the German teacher at Brookfield School, he meets and eventually weds Greer Garson. Goodbye Mr. Chips was Greer Garson's first introduction to American audiences. When she emerges from that mist on the Alp both Donat and she are climbing, she was a star from then on. Her screen image was set as the wise, tactful, and patient wife who was normally partnered with Walter Pidgeon. But she and Donat have good chemistry also. Paul Henreid also got his first exposure to American audiences as well. Interesting that in 1939 a German would be played so sympathetically. My feelings are that they wanted to show that the Allies had nothing against the German people only the terrible ideology that at that time held them in sway. Long after Henreid has had his last scene it is reported that he is killed in World War I, fighting for his country and against the country that gave him a living for many years. Good people can fight for the enemy also. Chips is the kind of character that we admire because he's at a job he loves and does give the world that infinitesimal extra ounce of good in doing that job. He's not acclaimed, certainly his demise wouldn't rate banner headlines, but so few of us are lucky to be in jobs and professions we truly love and not do for just a paycheck. In that great year of Gone With the Wind sweeping the Oscars that year, Robert Donat managed to beat out Clark Gable for the Best Actor Award. He had some other good competition that year with James Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Mickey Rooney in Babes in Arms, and Laurence Olivier in Wuthering Heights. The capstone of a great career. We should all hold and treasure teachers like Mr. Chipping of Brookfield School and the films made of their lives.

The third in the series of films MGM made in Britain was perhaps their greatest triumph, with a well-deserved Academy Award for Robert Donat, who played Mr Chips over a span of 60 years very convincingly. Always a great actor, Donat was perhaps at his best in this story covering the history of a schoolmaster from his first appearance at the school as a young idealist, through crusty middle age (and a change when he meets charming Greer Garson, in her first screen appearance, stranded up an Austrian mountain) and into his much loved dotage as a kind of human fixture and fittings of Brookfield School. James Hilton's book is developed here to give not only a view of the English public school system which probably never existed, but to cover issues such as the Great War with some power. The film is extremely touching in places - whether this is because of the acting or the excellent music I'm not quite sure. I do know that this version of the film is streets ahead of the misguided musical version which appeared three decades later with Peter O'Toole in the lead.

Goodbye Mr Chips must be one of the best films ever made. The acting of boys, masters and other characters is superb, as is the capturing of the late Victorian/Edwardian period in England, the joy of 1914 on the declaration of war, followed by the sombre roll-calls of the dead in chapel during the war years. The character of Chips is an instruction in how someone's life can be transformed for the better by fortuitous events, in this case the meeting on the mountain between Chips and Katherine, which changed him from being a shy but well-meaning schoolmaster who found it difficult to establish a rapport with his pupils and colleagues into someone whose hidden depths and charisma were brought into view by a woman he loved. This gentle, decent and moving film illustrates, through both Chips and Katherine, the importance of giving of oneself to others who in their turn will benefit as human beings; concepts which might seem outdated in our modern world but remain valuable and timeless.