SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

WillSushyMedia This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

Billie Morin This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Bessie Smyth Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

gavin6942 A headstrong young teacher (Maggie Smith) in a private school in 1930s Edinburgh ignores the curriculum and influences her impressionable 12 year old charges with her over-romanticized world view.Maggie Smith was singled out for her performance in the film. Dave Kehr of Chicago Reader said that Smith is "in one of those technically stunning, emotionally distant performances that the British are so darn good at." Yes, but what about Pamela Franklin? I think it is a shame she ever quit acting, as she is by far one of the best actresses of the 1970s and 80s.It is interesting to see how little Maggie Smith changed over 30 years, and how the school in this film could just as easily have been Hogwarts.

lasttimeisaw Dame Maggie Smith's first Oscar-winning film, she is Miss Jean Brodie, a zealous teacher in her prime (30s) at a conservative all-girl boarding school in Edinburgh in 1930s. Whose unorthodox teaching method gathers her a group of "Brodie's gals", whom she proudly acclaims as "crème de la crème", but her battle with the old-fashioned principal (an equally excellent and Celia Johnson), her emotional entanglements with two fellow teachers, Teddy (Robert Stephens) and Gordon (Gordan Lowther), may not be the most distraught concerns, when inside her own clique of "crème de la crème", there are betrayal, questions and decrying after her blind adulation of Fascism triggers one of her girl's death. The film is adapted from Muriel Spark's novel and based on Jay Presson Allen's play, who is also the screenwriter. With indoor settings occupy most of the film narrative, the film is exactly the sort of a warm bed for many breath-stopping two-handers, Smith and Johnson's confrontation is marvellous, and the near-end showdown between Smith and Franklin is even more merciless and astonishing (Pamela Franklin is unbelievably snubbed by the Academy for her brave and searing flair in such a sophisticated role as the teenager Sandy); however Smith's quintessential poignancy has been immaculately demonstrated during the monologue scenes when she is playing slides in the classroom, it's the "crème de la crème" of her long-lasting career. Starts as a farce of the equivalent of a female version of DEAD POETS SOCIETY (1989, a 7/10), but this film goes farther and digs deeper into the dark side of the humanity, the moral criterion is a moot, one could feel sympathy towards Miss Brodie's plight, but her story is not entirely guiltless. Director Ronald Neame has never acquired much fame as a director, but this one is a pure theatrical gem which hopefully has done some justice to him.

theowinthrop "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" is on the surface the story of a woman who is too romantic for her own good. And unfortunately she is a teacher at a girl's school in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1936, and she does not realize how popular and dangerous she is.Maggie Smith (who won her first of two Oscars for this performance) plays the part with a verve and style a real Jean Brodie would appreciate, and though Smith was a young woman at the time she also carries an additional burden of the character - not only is Jean a beautiful and enticing woman, but she is getting older and is worried about losing that critical edge in matters of sex that such types fear.She is having affairs with the school's art teacher (Robert Stephens) and another teacher (Gordon Jackson - later "Hudson" in "Upstairs, Downstairs"). Both men want her to marry them, but she is too flirty (she'd say independent) to do so. None of this sits well with the prim head of the school (Celia Johnson - the sad heroine in the classic "Brief Encounter"). It also does not sit well with Ms Johnson that Brodie has developed a minor cult of personality with those girls who have her as a teacher. She constantly refers to the students as "her gails", and boasts she transforms them into young women by opening up their minds.Actually she does open them (to appreciating art, life, love - she encourages them to "experiment" with men), but she is closing them to modern realities. Like many people in Great Britain in the 1930s (like George Bernard Shaw for awhile) she appreciates the firm "let's get things done" attitudes of Fascists on the continent like Mussolini and Franco (she does not mention Hitler, however). She believes them far more superior than the seemingly drab upholders of constitutional government like Stanley Baldwin (the current Prime Minister in 1936) or Ramsay MacDonald (the previous one). That the latter two, in the long run, did less harm than her heroes did is something she never gets a chance to talk about.* [*In the novel and in a longer television version on Masterpiece Theater back in the 1980s, Jean does get her view thrown into her face - a refugee from the continent is invited to tell about how wonderful the Fascist "revival" is there, and the young woman gives Jean and her students an angry earful about how wonderful these leaders really are!] She does have a bad affect on one chubby, somewhat slow girl named Mary MacGregor. Mary is convinced to run off to Spain to fight with her brother. But Mary happens to join Franco's side and is killed. Her brother was fighting Franco.Johnson, in the end, is assisted by her school spies (one is a silent, wormy little woman whose brother is a local Presbyterian church elder), and by one of the girls who seems to come to her senses. In the end Jean is forced to leave the school, and confronts the girl who turned on her, whom she labels an assassin.Actually the event are a little complicated here. The girl is having an affair with Robert Stephens, and sees he still carries his torch for Brodie. Fed up she is determined to get her vengeance on Brodie, and she tells Stephens why he will always be a third-rate painter. She is triumphant over Brodie, but she is aware that her character has been shown to be selfish and sneaky, and will never change. Johnson does get rid of Brodie, but has to be truly under-handed to do so. And Brodie, for all the shame of being forced out by these two still has her own sense of self-worth, comparing herself at the end to her ancestor Deacon William Brodie, the Edinburgh carpenter, cleric, and town councilor who was also a burglar at night, and was hung publicly on a gallows he had constructed.** Brodie might be down for the count as the film ends, but she will survive. Possibly better than her assassin will.[**Deacon Brodie's story is better known to most people than we think. Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Strange Tale of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde" was based on this tale.]

bkoganbing The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie hit an entertainment trifecta so to speak. A successful novel by Mary Spark, a successful Broadway play with a 379 performance run in 1967-69 and finally an Academy Award winning film, you can't do better than that. Not to mention the Tony Award it won on Broadway for Zoe Caldwell. The starring title role is a choice one, it garnered both a Tony and an Oscar for the two different actresses who played it.On screen once you see Maggie Smith play the headstrong teacher Jean Brodie from a girl's school in Scotland in the Thirties you will not forget her. If you've seen the Alfred Hitchcock classic Rope you have some idea what Jean Brodie is all about. In Rope James Stewart plays an iconoclastic teacher who talks about superior beings and later on he sees what kind of influence he's had on impressionable youth at the fancy prep school he teaches at when Farley Granger and John Dall do a thrill killing because they've convinced themselves they're somehow superior.Stewart's students do damage to others, Maggie Smith's charges do damage to themselves. Smith's students drink a little too deeply from her advice about being adventurous women and exploring the world. She's also an admirer of 'superior people' who become leaders and her example is Benito Mussolini in Italy who was legendary for making the trains run on time in his country. She also encourages her students to explore their sexuality, initiate themselves with an affair with an older man, all in the name of becoming worldly and modern females. That does not sit well with principal Celia Johnson who vows to get rid of Smith. In the end Johnson has ample ammunition to do the job. Young Jane Carr as the naive girl who takes Smith all too seriously goes off to Spain to fight in the Civil War there. Carr's brother is already there, but Carr listening to her teacher extol the virtues of that superior leader Franco goes and enlists on his side. She gets herself killed in Spain.But not before Pamela Franklin decides to lose her virginity to art teacher Robert Stephens who Smith was involved with. She also becomes a sadder and wiser girl way too young. But she delivers some really biting lines at both Smith and Stephens, exposing the pretensions both have.One thing that American audiences might not get is a small bit where Smith covers the portrait of Great Britain's Prime Minister at the time, Stanley Baldwin. Baldwin was the Tory Prime Minister in his third ministry at this point and he was first elected with the exciting slogan of Safety First. That could mean many things, but what it was taken by the British public to mean at the time was a calm and quiet leadership, a British version of Calvin Coolidge. Hardly the kind of guy that Jean Brodie would admire like Mussolini or Franco.Jimmy Stewart finds out and realizes just how his philosophy has effected his pupils, but for Miss Jean Brodie she remains absolutely clueless to the end. Nevertheless Maggie Smith's bravura performance of this clueless teacher won her a deserved Oscar.The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie also got an Oscar nomination for Rod McKuen's song Jean in the Best Song category. But the Academy voters gave the award to Burt Bacharach and Hal David for Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head. They were clearly the best songs in 1969's field.Though Maggie Smith got the Oscar a lot of the other performances were also unforgettable. Celia Johnson, Pamela Franklin, Robert Stephens and Gordon Jackson who played another teacher that Smith was involved with are memorable, you will not forget Jane Carr as the touching and naive young girl who dies in Spain trying to impress her idiotic teacher. She should have been nominated herself in the Best Supporting Actress category.Jean, Jean, you will not forget clueless Jean Brodie once you've seen the film.