Slow and sentimental, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, with its values of modesty and public service, must seem like a charming antique to a generation weaned with daytime talk shows and WWF wrestling. But patient viewers will instead find it to be a marvelous character study.
Robert Donat could play a dashing leading man, as proved by Hitchcock's The 39 Steps (1935). But he was well cast for the role of British schoolteacher Mr. Chipping, despite having to spend most of the film wearing heavy makeup to appear aged. Chipping is shy and awkward, but is sympathetic due to his self-effacing, gentle humor. Donat captures the personality perfectly, and he was rewarded with an Oscar for Best Actor.
The story begins during the 1870s. Chipping, then young and earnest, becomes a teacher at Brookfield, a prestigious, traditional school for teenaged boys. At first too meek to control his unruly class, he is forced to become a disciplinarian.
Goodbye, Mr. Chips was the first major role for Paul Henreid, later noted for Casablanca and Now, Voyager. Henreid plays Chipping's good-humored schoolmaster buddy, who convinces a reluctant Chipping to travel to Austria with him during a break in semesters.
There he meets Greer Garson, making an auspicious film debut as Mr. Chipping's glamorous and graceful love interest. Garson received a Best Actress nomination for her efforts. Over the next six years, she would be nominated another five times for Best Actress, winning for subtly propagandistic Mrs. Miniver (1942).
His kindly nature is further softened and humanized by Garson, who becomes his wife and ambassador. Chipping becomes legendary at Brookfield, staying there even with his traditional methods have fallen out of fashion. Although a key deathbed scene is judiciously omitted by director Sam Wood, the ending is a wrenching tearjerker, even more so than Bette Davis in Dark Victory from the same year.
Since the story takes place over some sixty years, one of the child actors, Terry Kilburn, plays multiple generations of the same family. Chipping's perpetual teasing of the students involves evoking similar characteristics of their ancestors, whom Chipping has also taught. He must have been at a loss for conversation when encountering a boy whose father had never attended the school.
Goodbye, Mr. Chips was adapted from a serialized novel by James Hilton, best known for "Lost Horizon". Hilton modelled Chipping after W.H. Balgarnie, a schoolmaster for a half century at The Lays in Cambridge.
A major MGM production, it was filmed at Repton School in England. Many of the students and faculty of that institution appear as extras in the film.
1939 was one of Hollywood's greatest years, and the tough competition that year for Best Actor included Clark Gable (Gone With the Wind), Laurence Olivier (Wuthering Heights) and James Stewart (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington). [Mickey Rooney was also somehow nominated, but I doubt that he bothered to write an acceptance speech.] Robert Donat, who had been nominated the year before for The Citadel, was the upset winner for Best Actor.
It was the only Academy Award for Goodbye, Mr. Chips. However, it was nominated for six other Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director (Sam Wood), and Best Screenplay.
Goodbye, Mr. Chips was later unwisely remade as a musical in 1969, starring Peter O'Toole and pop singer Petula Clark. The Three Stooges parodied the film's title with their 1941 short, So Long Mr. Chumps. (76/100)
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