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Category:    Home > Reviews > Drama > Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie

The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie

 

Picture: C+     Sound: B-     Extras: C+     Film: B

 

 

Maggie Smith is an amazing actress without any doubt, still a working star decades later.  The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) is a still impressive film with Smith offering an enduring performance as the title character, a teacher who is subtly overbearing when it comes to her students at an all-girls school.  She has her conflicts with the head of the school who hates her, a few men she is also at odds with and a style of conformity that devours impressionable youth and goes as far as to support Mussolini!

 

The year is 1932 and as smart, educated and intelligent as Brodie is, her pompousness has made her enough a fit in for her to build an undeniable stronghold in her Edinburgh school with all of its own high standards.  That sets the stage for all of her issues and conflict to inevitably come to a head at the same time.  What could have been another run-on melodrama has some surprising edge; especially considering the conformist world it takes place in, but something deeper triumphs about the dangers of blind faith.  That especially rang true during the Vietnam era.

 

Pamela Franklin has the job of eventually going up against Smith and remarkably pulls it off, one of the best child actors of her generation and simply born with the talent.  Gordon Jackson, known later for his stint on the hit British TV series The Professionals, takes a less serious turn and shows what else he is capable of.  Then there is Robert Stevens, who was involved with Smith in real life at the time, as Teddy.  He is an artist who has had a falling out with Brodie and the situation just gets more and more frayed.  Jay Presson Allen (Hitchcock’s Marnie) adapted this original Muriel Spark novel as a play, and is responsible for the screenplay here.  It is an amazing work that even director Ronald Neame stuck strictly to.  This is a fine dramatic work that has somehow stood the test of time in ways not expected and this DVD version makes it all the more so.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image shows some age in the way the color turns on and off slightly at the edges and with a few other minor blemishes, but it looks good for its age.  Without those minor flaws, it would easily rate higher, with color consistency otherwise and some good depth.  Ted Moore, B.S.C., had been shooting many of the James Bond films and missed On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (issued the same year) in part in taking this on.  It is more masterful work from one of the greatest cameramen of all time.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo is better than the 2.0 English Mono, even offering some slight Pro Logic surrounds, a mode this mix actually plays better in.  French and Spanish Mono are also offered.  Extras include the theatrical teaser and trailer from the original release, trailers from several other Fox DVD classic titles, a few stills in a gallery section, and an exemplary audio commentary that vies between Franklin and director Neame.  They are both terrific and it is one to catch.

 

Neame, who has given us important films like The Horse’s Mouth (1958) with Alec Guinness, is honest enough to be self-critical and notes that a few parts of the film drag on.  He’s right, but is wise enough to acknowledge it was him then and not now, instead of going back and destroying the film for some “director’s cut”.  He truly is one of the great gentleman directors and that is all the more reason to admire The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie, no matter what misgivings he or this critic may have.  The acting of the cast, even the young ladies of the time, endures and Smith deserves her legend al the more.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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