The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
by Ronald Neame
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DVD details
Actor: Celia Johnson, Gordon Jackson, Maggie Smith, Pamela Franklin, Robert StephensDirector: Ronald Neame
Brand: SMITH,MAGGIE
Cinematographer: Ted Moore
Editor: Norman Savage
Producer: James Cresson
Producer: Robert Fryer
Writer: Jay Presson Allen
Writer: Muriel Spark
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); Spanish (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 1.0
Format: Anamorphic, Color, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 116 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-07-06
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: 20th Century Fox
DVD Reviews of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
DVD Review: Excellent
Summary: 5 Stars
I had seen the Broadway revival a few years ago, and that was very well done. It took me a few years longer to see the film (I was expecting to be disappointed), but it was very good. Actually, better than very good, wonderful. Not only Maggie Smith, but the rest of the cast were excellent. DVD Review: Intriguing, subject matter not my taste
Summary: 2 Stars
Miss Jean Brodie is a Scottish teacher who promotes her own personal ideals from the pulpit of the classroom. At times she is narcissistic, selfish and idealistic, she skates through life indulging herself and denying herself on a whim and promoting a unique blend of individualism and values which are at times laudable and at times deplorable.
Attracted to a married man, she instead hmm... She encourages via proxy one of her students (yuk), to be his paramour, unaware that one of her other prot?g?s will become involved with him.
It was difficult for me to overcome my visceral reaction to the idea of student/teacher relations must less that this was sort of approved of by the lead character. It seemed immoral to the extreme. At that point I lost respect for Miss Brodie and her philosophy.
DVD Review: Bleak debut of Maggie Smith
Summary: 1 Stars
The film today seems stale and exagerated. Maggie Smith overacts.Maggie Smith at the BBC
DVD Review: Interesting to see movie after reading the book
Summary: 4 Stars
Maggie Smith was perfect for the role of Miss Jean Brodie. Was sorry to see they left out one of the girls who was in the book as her story was particularly interesting. The "posing for the portrait" nude scene was surprising for the time the movie was made -- the late 1960s -- but really fit in with the story. A cute story during the Special Features Commentary by director, Ronald Neame, indicated that Maggie Smith and her co-star-husband, Robert Stephens, became pregnant during the making of the movie because the B&B where they stayed had peacocks in the grounds that woke them up every morning between 4:00 and 5:00!DVD Review: ..."She Thinks to Intimidate Me By the Use of Quarter Hours..."
Summary: 5 Stars
The title of this review reflects the bemused observations of the film's title character, unforgettably played by Dame Maggie Smith while reading a note summoning her to an after-school conference with Marcia Blaine Academy's headmistress, Miss Mackay(Celia Johnson) to her beguiled young students. The subsequent 4:15 PM conference will be one of three such conferences that each mark turning points in this film.
Smith's Brodie does not fit the image of the olive-skinned, dark-haired Scotswoman with the "Romanesque" nose described by Muriel Spark in her 1961 novel; crucial incidents in the book are distorted, and some major characters deleted. But Smith brings her own understanding of the character and more stereotypical Scottish looks of a milky complexion and auburn hair to the viewer's eye.
We first meet her on a lovely day in 1932 Edinburgh, as she cycles attend the first day of school.She is soon surrounded by the boisterous students who adore her--the most prominent of these being the red-haired romantic looking Jenny (Diane Grayson), plain but histrionic Monica(Shirley Steedman), and the subtly sharp Sandy (Pamela Franklin) who doesn't miss a trick.
The new school year introduces a new student to the distinguished "Brodie Set":The shy orphaned heiress, Mary McGregor(Jane Carr) who has a slight stammer, and who will find herself alternately being scolded by teachers and bullied by Sandy and the others. For her, Miss Brodie's taking her under her wing will be a fateful encounter, indeed...
Miss Brodie's methods of teaching history are at odds with the conservative Marcia Blaine curriculum( Symbolically, her colorful wardrobe clashes sharply with the dull gray uniforms around her), and she constantly diverts from the daily lesson plan to regale students with stories about the love she lost during World War I( managing to conceal this fact when Miss Mackay makes an unexpected visit to her class and wonders why Monica is crying), discussing her favorite artist, Giotto, and showing slides of her jaunt into Fascist Italy.
At the center of the story is the love triangle between Miss Brodie, the married art teacher Teddy Lloyd( Smith's then-real-life husband, the brash, earthy, and charismatic Robert Stephens)and the music teacher Gordon Lowther (Gordon Jackson), both of whom have talents that remind Miss Brodie of her beloved Hugh, the love she lost during the Battle of Flanders.
During the weekends Miss Brodie and Mr. Lowther share at the latter's family estate at Cramond, they are often joined by Sandy, Monica, Jenny, and Mary. But Sandy soon guesses the two are having an affair and shares her knowledge of this fact with Jenny and Monica.
We see the routine of the students, and travel with the characters through four years during which we see Miss Brodie's continued fight to keep her job, the tension between her and her two lovers, and her expression of pro-Fascist views and admiration for Franco and Mussolini that will have fatal consequences.
There inevitably comes the time when one of her four young confidantes, with whom she shared campus ground picnics, trips to Mr. Lloyd's studio, trips to the opera, and trips to Cramond will grow up and lose faith in the middle-aged spinster struggling to relive her past. We see a certain distasteful perversion of Miss Brodie's that will morally compromise a student as well.
Supporting characters include Ann Way as the quiet subordinate secretary, Miss Gaunt, Molly Weir and Helena Gloag as the Misses Campbell, who teach sewing, Gordon Jackson's real-life wife, Rona Anderson as the Science teacher, Miss Lockhart, and sweet little Heather Seymour as the young student, Clara.
Viewers will be treated to riveting performances, including the one that gave Maggie Smith her first Oscar. While we don't learn the fate of the girls from this film as we do in the book, to the sound of a haunting and very Scottish-sounding background theme song, we are given a slice of life in a unique time and place that never fails to stir the imagination.
Description of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Based on Muriel Spark?s best-selling novel, the film The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie earned a Best Actress Oscar for its star, Maggie Smith, in 1969. The theme song, ?Jean? written by Rod McKuen, was also nominated for a Best Song Academy Award. An inspiration to the young girls she teaches and a challenge to the 1932 Edinburgh school who retains her services, Jean Brodie (Smith) espouses her wisdom on art and music, defends fascism, and otherwise encourages fiercely independent thinking in her students. As she engages in ongoing battles with the school?s rigid heads and bewilders two men in love with her, Miss Brodie also faces the biggest trial of her life when her career and livelihood become threatened.Maggie Smith is so witty and commanding in this film, you might forget that the script paints Jean Brodie as an ultimately self-deluding spinster. Dame Maggie won the first of her two Oscars for playing a teacher in 1930s Edinburgh more in thrall to her romantic notions of art and beauty than the real world, a cultivator of worshipping "Brodie Girls." (She exalts the Mona Lisa and Mussolini with equal fervor.) Smith's expert playing makes many of the brogue-heavy Brodie-isms worth memorizing ("She seeks to intimidate me by the use of quarter-hours.") and raises the picture above its generally theatrical style. Real-life husband Robert Stephens plays Jean's married lover, Celia Johnson excels as the hostile headmistress, and Pamela Franklin is the deadpan whistle-blower within Miss Brodie's coven. The dippy music of Rod McKuen helps mark the movie as more of a reflection of the '60s than the '30s. --Robert Horton
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