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DVD The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
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
I finally caught up with this film, and, like so many high profile classics, I found it to be tedious. The script lumbered along and I found no enthusiasm for any of the characters. I must admit that the title character is complex and for that consideration, as well as the look of the period, I gave it 2 stars.
"One should never succumb to provincial ignorance."
The film, "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" is based on the novel by Muriel Spark. Jean Brodie (Maggie Smith) is an attractive spinster in her 30s. The year is 1932, and Miss Brodie teaches at the Marcia Blaine School in Edinburgh. While the headmistress remains somewhat suspicious of both Jean and her teaching methods, Miss Brodie is careful to ensure the loyalty of her girls. Miss Brodie is involved with two male teachers--the art teacher--who is married, and the music teacher who is single and very eligible. Miss Brodie is rather indiscreet with her pupils. While she encourages individualism, she also appeals to the ready romanticism of her teenage pupils. Miss Brodie is very strict about maintaining standards of behaviour, and she indulges a favoured group of girls with after hours outings and trips to the opera. Miss Brodie's lack of discretion leads to some serious consequences for her, and for some of her girls, and the film addresses many questions concerning the role of a teacher's responsibilities.
Maggie Smith as Jean Brodie is a joy to watch. She certainly must fit the author's physical image of the Scottish schoolteacher. While the plot is faithful to the book, the film's flavour is hampered by its 1960s style and by Hollywood overtones. Some of the scenes with the schoolgirls are slightly overwrought, so the film begins to feel like a mismatch between "The Sound of Music" and "Mary Poppins". I should point out that while this is not a musical, there were moments when I anticipated the entire cast bursting into song. The Miss Brodie of the novel is a subversive--the Miss Brodie in the film version is an eccentric. The production is glossy--perhaps a little too glossy for this tale, and as a result, the film loses much of the bite of the Sparks novel, and this is a great shame--displacedhuman
A frustrated spinster......
Towards the end of the movie, as her world started to fall apart, she was told that she was a frustrated spinster. In the movie, Jean Brodie is clearly a frustrated woman, seeking love but rejecting it. She pines for her lost love, Hugh, in WWI action but it is never revealed what there was between them. There are several great performances in this film, set in 1932 in Scotland at a private girls school. Maggie Smith does a tremendous performance as a strong willed and independent minded teacher, determined to do her own way of teaching, regardless. She won an Oscar for it, and it is clear why. Pamela Franklin does a great job as a student who becomes her foil, and some of the ending dialogue is particularly strong as they clash over Jean Brodie's firing. Jean Brodie lived in a world of unreality but couldn't see that. Jean Brodie seemed to either steer her students to perform to their potential, or send them crashing. She kept referring to herself as being in her prime. Commentary by the director, who gives insight into the making of the film, and by Pamela Franklin, who was 19 when the film was released in 1959. The weakness in the extras (and there are only a few extras) are the still shots in the gallery. The shots seemed to be a real mish-mash, without context and some of people not really involved in the film. This is a good DVD to have if you enjoy a strong performance from Maggie Smith and is certainly a classic movie.
This silky smooth film noir pits gruff police detective Dana Andrews, stiff and blunt in his street-bred manners, against a cultured columnist and acidic wit (Clifton Webb at his prissiest) in a battle of wits during a murder investigation. The cop is a romantic hiding under a hard-boiled exterior who falls in love with the beautiful victim through the portrait that hangs in her apartment. Gene Tierney, whose heart-shaped face mixes the exotic with the girl next door, brings the poise and calm of a model to her role as the object of every man's gaze and the target of a killer. Laura, handsomely shot in dreamy black and white, is the first and best of Otto Preminger's cool, controlled murder mysteries. In the gritty world of film noir it remains the most refined and elegant example... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Gene Tierney - Dana Andrews Director(s): Rouben Mamoulian - Otto Preminger DVD Release Date: Released the 15 March 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Before he made the classic All About Eve, writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz made this clever story about three wives who spend an afternoon at a children's picnic mulling over a letter all three had just received, from a woman who says she's just run off with one of their husbands. As the wives--a former farm girl (Jeanne Crain), a radio soap opera writer (Ann Sothern), and a social climber from the wrong side of the tracks (Linda Darnell)--mull over the troubles of their marriages, each begins to think that she's the one left behind. A Letter to Three Wives doesn't have the crackling show-biz milieu of Eve, but it has the same mix of snappy dialogue and topnotch performances. The tone ranges from florid sentiment to unblinking cynicism, yet Mankiewicz... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Jeanne Crain - Linda Darnell - Ann Sothern Director(s): Joseph L. Mankiewicz DVD Release Date: Released the 22 February 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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If you think Zorba the Greek is a simple-minded homage to a man with a zest for life, then you haven't seen the movie. Basil (Alan Bates), a reticent British writer, comes to the Mediterranean island of Crete to revive a mine his father owned. On the way, he meets a Greek roustabout named Zorba (Anthony Quinn) and hires him to help, little suspecting that Zorba's exuberance will lead him to some dark and troubling places--frankly, if the last 30 minutes of Zorba the Greek are what it means to embrace life, some viewers will want to shut the door in life's face. But there's no denying the movie's ambitious scope and implacable force, even as it paints an alien and disturbing portrait of life in a Greek village. On top of that, gorgeous cinematography and one of the... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Anthony Quinn - Alan Bates Director(s): Michael Cacoyannis DVD Release Date: Released the 03 August 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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A schizophrenic woman with three sharp and contrasted personalities will constitute the basic dramatic nerve of this peculiar and mature film who deserved with extreme justice the Academy Award for Joanne that year.
A classic and magnificent study material for all Pschology students. More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Joanne Woodward - David Wayne Director(s): Nunnally Johnson DVD Release Date: Released the 05 October 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Leave Her to Heaven is one of the most unblinkingly perverse movies ever offered up as a prestige picture by a major studio in the golden age of Hollywood. Gene Tierney, whose lambent eyes, porcelain features, and sweep of healthy-American-girl hair customarily made her a 20th Century Fox icon of purity, scored an Oscar nomination playing a demonically obsessive daughter of privilege with her own monstrous notion of love. By the time she crosses eyebeams with popular novelist Cornel Wilde on a New Mexico-bound train, her jealous manipulations have driven her parents apart and her father to his grave. Well, no, not grave: Wilde soon gets to watch her gallop a glorious palomino across a red-rock horizon as she metronomically sows Dad's ashes to the winds. Mere screen moments later,... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Gene Tierney - Cornel Wilde Director(s): John M. Stahl DVD Release Date: Released the 22 February 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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