jn1356-1
If somebody doesn't teach the children, our society and our culture dies out in one generation. That makes teaching THE necessary profession. Without teachers, we have nothing, we can do nothing, we are nothing. And there is no profession more thankless, more under-compensated, more maligned, and more difficult. Why would anyone do it? For the best answer available, watch this version of "Goodbye, Mr. Chips".First and foremost, a young (33 years old) plays a British boy's school master, from he first day at school, through decades of boys, through his retirement and his dotage. Donat brilliant captures Mr. Chippings' awkward beginning, his fumbling to find himself as a teacher, his growing comfort in his own skin, largely courtesy of Katherine, a lovely young woman whom he meets while lost in the mountains on a summer vacation hike; whom he marries, and loses to childbirth. Donat ages brilliantly and believably.Greer Garson plays Katherine, with all the loveliness and grace that characterized her life and career. Paul Henried is the German teacher, Staefel, who persuades Chipping to take the vacation where he meets his Kathie, who must leave Britain for his home in Germany when the two countries get embroiled in World War I, whom Chipping, to the consternation of many, memorializes when Staefel dies fighting for Germany in the war.But watch the boys. Little Terry Kilburn plays each of the Colley boys as little ones, with heart-breaking cuteness. Watch the boys grow, watch how they come to love Chipping, and how he loves them.Keep the Kleenex box handy, and end up envying Chips his life, though we pity him almost throughout. He is the most blessed of human beings. He is a teacher! God bless them all.
ElMaruecan82
1939 was truly a phenomenal year for movie lovers with such distinguished masterpieces as "Gone With the Wind", "The Wizard of Oz", "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" to start with the most emblematic ones, and followed by the no less revered "Stagecoach", "Ninotchka" or "Young Mr. Lincoln" …Yet, despite its lower recognition, "Goodbye, Mr. Chips", also Best Picture nominee, is still likely to grab the attention of a movie fan because it features the performance that won the Oscar for Best Actor, which is saying a lot in 1939. No, it was not James Stewart who won for his outstanding emotional role as Jefferson Smith, neither did Clark Gable as the iconic Rhett Butler or Laurence Olivier as Heathcliff, no … fate decided that the prestigious award would go to a Robert Donat who played a shy and humble schoolmaster named Arthur Chipping aka 'Mr. Chips'. I admit that I was less eager to see the film than the performance that beat those stellar performances but the result was the same anyway. First, "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" is significant as a milestone for school movies. "Dead Poets Society", "To Sir, With Love", "Blackboard Jungle", they all owe something to "Goodbye, Mr. Chips", the inspirational story of a teacher who dedicated his whole life, 63 years, to his profession, to his boys. But don't expect the life-changing teacher, who'd open his pupils' eyes. Sam Wood's film is beyond the stereotypes it will later inspire. All we have is just a man who'll learn the most difficult job in the world and the noblest, something that demands courage, patience, understanding and a sincere enthusiasm. His authority is challenged in the beginning, making him question if he's fit to the job, but progressively, he'll try to learn to find the right balance. But it's only by meeting his future wife that his status in Brookfield will go from a good teacher to the living legend.Greer Garson, as Susan, was nominated for an Oscar in a leading role, and I can understand why it leaves some viewers perplexed. But I think she exemplifies the importance of a woman in man's life, and no man is shy enough to never find the true love, and certainly not a good man like Chips. Susan will lead the lead character, teaching him how to smile, how to overcome his own weaknesses, how to make a friend out of his kids, much more, she's the one who'll earn him his nickname. The film's second act entirely focuses on the relationship between Chips and Susan, their romantic waltz in Vienna, the Blue Danube music. And although it tragically ends with her precocious death by giving birth, we understand that she paved the way to Chips' popularity and helped him to become a living legend. I was also interested to see the film because Chips was listed in AFI's Top 50 Greatest heroes, and I wanted to know what was so inspiring about him. I think he's like Rocky Balboa, a sort of ideological hero who conveys positive values about life, about remaining true to a sort of a positive discipline. He's a man who faced war, the death of his wife, of colleagues, friend and of course pupils, and still he took the distance. Full of contradictions, he was capable of teaching during German bombings and yet delivers a eulogy to one of his German friends who taught at Brookfield. Chips valued life too much to get stuck in patriotic exaltations. He was a good man, eccentric, charismatic, funny, but a positive model.And if by no means, "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" is equal to "Gone With the Wind", in its own humbleness and simplicity, the film is capable to reach a superior emotionality that doesn't rely on epic moment or powerful dialog. It's just the sight of this humble man, going older and older, yet never letting his love toward his profession and pupils being altered by the passing of time. Robert Donat is magnificent as Mr. Chips, and I couldn't believe a 34-year old could play an old man in such a convincing way, in this cute way to stick his mouth to his mustache or to emphasizes the 'o'. Going from this mild-mannered playboy to a shy middle-aged man and then an old Einstein-looking elderly is indeed a performance that deserved an accolade. But Donat's performance and the impressive ways were not the only way to suggest the passing of time. When he comes in Brookfield to start as a teacher, kids talk about Prussians defeating the French, well the film demands a little knowledge, but we understand it's in 1870. Later, the year 1901 is indicated when a student comments about Queen Victoria's death and can't believe Britain will have a king. This summarizes what Chips incarnates: longevity. He's a 83 year old schoolmaster, a living legend, loved and admired, who's so old in his school that he taught three generations of boys, an element of his life cleverly highlighted by the three Colley's kids, all played by the same kid. Still, one of the most representative moments of the film is the many montages of pupils and students filing past and recalling their names. The flow of kids, of new faces, of children and young men, is like a metaphoric view of life as a river where it's never the same water that runs. And combined by with the ringing bells and the film's outstanding music in high volume, and Chips' deathbed words, it's impossible not to be touched by this film, and its lead character, a sympathetic character full of this same innocence that would be lost after 1939 and Hollywood would see the rise of more cynical and fatalistic genres, like the film-noir. Chips dies with his innocence, but his remembrance is eternal.
Karl Self
... because this is also a deeply reactionary movie full of platitudes. Mr. "Chips" Chipping is an affable and somewhat scatter-brained Latin and Greek teacher at an elite English boarding school, and this movie shows his career over 60 years from young man and inept teacher during the Victorian age, until he's called back from retirement to finally serve as headmaster during the Great War (this movie came out just as a much greater war was immanent). In the process, the movie euphemizes corporal punishment, crass class differences (the aristocrats among the boys will become commanding officers upon graduation, the hoi polloi will go to the trenches) and the whole drudgery of boarding school education. That the movie still remains watchable today is due to a good script, excellent acting, and the fact that the placid story is beset by fairly realistic tragedy: Chips is a loner until his Fifties; when he eventually finds a wife who's young and radiant to boot, she dies during parturition. He never fully achieves his ambition of becoming headmaster, and sees waves of his students and friends die in the trenches of the First World War. This movie remains watchable because it never fully caves in to sentimentalism.
