Les belles années de Miss Brodie

Beautifully filmed and acted by all the performers, this is a knock-out film. Maggie Smith is incredible right down to her Morningside accent. The other players hold their own against her powerhouse performance. The Edinburgh locations are great and the film has a remarkably nostalgic quality that reflects Brodie's romanticism. A beautiful Rod McKuen score as well! A must see film. An interesting comparison can be made with Dead Poet's Society, which has a male teacher in an all male school (compared to a female teacher in an all girl's school). In Brodie, unorthodox irresponsible teaching is condemned while in Dead Poet's Society it is valorized. In both the teaching methods bring about the death of a student and the school's reaction is similar. The film makers, however, come down on opposite sides in their attitudes toward the teachers

This movie is often billed as a 'one-woman show', a study of an extraordinary character, Miss Jean Brodie, played by an excellent actress. However, the movie is much more than that. It is a study of charisma and influence, of teachers and students, and presents a complex and fascinating coming-of-age story. This study takes place through the movie's double-focus on both Jean Brodie and her most precocious student, Sandy. Sandy is the strongest and most independent of Miss Brodie's students, and eventually she rebels and rejects her teaching completely. However, she is also truest to her teacher's expressed goals. Miss Brodie supposedly wants to teach 'her girls' to be like herself: powerful, independent individuals, free from the shackles of authority and group-think, beyond conventional sexual morality. In fact, she preys on the weakness and insecurity of her students, punishes independence and rewards slavish loyalty to her and to her personal plans and ideals. (The film's more subtle concern with fascism and authoritarianism echoes this theme: fascism elevates great individuals and praises their strength, just as it demands total obedience and slavishness from the rest.) Sandy, by recognizing and rejecting Miss Brodies's actions and plans, becomes her truest student: not only sexually adventurous, but bold, independent, and confrontational. The final scenes illustrate this beautifully. Miss Brodie has truly put "an old head" on Sandy's "young shoulders", and she truly is "hers for life"--though not in the way originally intended. In this way the movie presents a profound, sophisticated and realistic account of the way powerful individuals influence one another.

Just watched it for the third time in as many days. Oh, Edingurgh looks gorgeous, and so does Dame Maggie. I admit to knowing very little about her, but this role alone would make me a lifetime fan.

Rather than another summary and interpretation I want to riff on a few seemingly random points ...

1) The costumes. Fabulous, fabulous period costumes. The grey of the "gehrls" ... all those pleated skirts and dropped waists! Sandy's little gingham number! The bloomers ... oh, how sweet those bloomers were (and I mean nothing perverse by that, I just thought they were cute, and I'll own up to always wondering what was under those '30s skirts). The school uniforms, the effect of the repetition on that gray, gray, gray, and those tidy peter-pan collared shirts: you could easily see why Miss Brodie fancied herself a bit of a Duce herself, she seemed to be surrounded by a uniformed army. And then ... against the greys of the girls, the greys, whites and blacks of the staff -- wonderful houndstooths and glen plaids, especially on the headmistress -- Miss Brodie, impossibly slim and hipless, in radiant plums, flame colors, paisleys and asymmetrical jackets. If only I could have a tailor like that. It worked, it absolutely works still: it doesn't look a bit garish, as so many Technicolor extravaganzas can.

2) Miss Brodie's blindness to who Sandy really is - her insensitivity to her; going on about how "ordinary morals will not apply" to the allegedly-beautiful girl (well, she's blonde anyway) while failing to look beneath the glasses of the real stunner, Sandy. Who with the slightest bit of knowledge about pre-teen girls would do that - harp on a friend's beauty and negligently add, "Oh, but you have insight, dear"? The whole set-up: Sandy's elevated to a peer-like relationship, Sandy's confided in, yet Sandy is only a mirror for Jean, not valued, not truly noticed. I believe that's the dynamic - almost like a neglected lover's - that triggers Sandy's betrayal.

3) Sandy, and her amazing transformation. My jaw actually dropped when we saw her with the painter: did they film over a period of years, I wondered? How could that little girl be THIS young woman? Going back and watching - the schoolgirl uniform, the tousled short hair, the whole expression, look in the eyes, everything. The over-sized glasses. The most convincing precocious-12-year-old performance. And then - pow, an adult! all without CGI. That was impressive.

4) The giggling and sexually curious girls. Hey, I do remember being 12, and yeah, it was like that!

5) That incredible dance scene, the 2 girls tangoing while speculating on "doing it." Fantastic blocking. And funny, and charming as hell. I especially like Sandy's aggressive cranking of the Victrola.

I personally detested the painter - the whole notion of the father of 6 tomcatting about, well, yuck - and his manhandling of the ladies is simply vile. But those were the times, I suppose. The headmistress was sublime. The overall look is artful but not overdone and all perfectly unified and beautiful. Enjoy - I certainly have!

Maggie Smith was already a major star in her native England and 4 years before she had earned an Oscar nomination in the supporting category for her Desdemona in "Othello" with Laurence Olivier but her Jean Brodie arrived to revolutionize everything, specially her own career. She won an Oscar and her win was considered one of the great upsets in the Academy's history. Watching The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie 48 years after its original release, told me that the Academy got it right then. Her performance is, quite simply, extraordinary. She's not playing a regular human being, no, she's playing a sort of benign monster, full of good intentions but, goodness, she's mad, mad as a hatter and from that point of view, she's truly dangerous. Maggie Smith goes for it, body and soul, Her confrontation of her superior, played magnificently by Celia Johnson, is of such power that I had to rewind immediately and see it again once, twice, three times. Superlative.

Maggie Smith revels being in "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie," a 1969 film based on the play by Ronald Neame. Smith, in her great film role, plays the narcissistic, romantic, unconventional Jean Brodie, a teacher in a conservative school in 1932.

Brodie refers to her 12-year-old students as "her girls," rhapsodizes about her lover who fell in World War I, shows slides of her trip to Italy, extols the virtues of "Il Duce" (Mussolini) and Fascism, and has picnics with the students, serving food such as pate de foie gras. The headmistress (Celia Johnson) may not like her, but two male teachers (Robert Stephens and Gordon Jackson) are crazy about her: one the handsome, married art teacher, whom she won't let herself love, and the other, a weak, traditional man who wants marriage but gets the free-wheeling Ms. Brodie instead.

One can't help liking or even loving Jean Brodie, mostly because of the vivid characterization of Maggie Smith - her Brodie is funny, fun, eccentric, devoted, and loves bucking the system. Underneath all that "truth" and "romance," however, is a woman with a very over-idealized view of the world, a woman who doesn't really see "her girls" as anything but tools in her own game and to satisfy her own needs. One student (Pamela Franklin), the strongest of the lot, ultimately sees through her.

Franklin is marvelous, and holds her own against Smith's brilliant, biting, flamboyant performance. Smith's husband, Robert Stephens, is very good as the art teacher who loves her in spite of himself; Celia Johnson is formidable as the headmistress; and Gordon Jackson, as the overwhelmed, good Mr. Lowther, is wonderful. Each makes a strong impression.

Ultimately, though, the role of Jean Brodie is a beautifully constructed one, and as played by Maggie Smith, is the center of the film. I saw Smith in person in "Lettice and Lovage," and it remains one of my all-time great nights of theater. I laughed until my face hurt, and then at the end, the character has a serious monologue - and you could hear a pin drop. What a privilege to see this actress anywhere and any time, in any medium.