"D. Spencer Hines" <poguemidden@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>This is a superb film regarding a narcissistic woman who damages the
lives
>of the teenage girls entrusted to her care. She betrays the trust of the
>school that employs her as a teacher --- and the parents who haven't the
>foggiest notion of what she is doing to their children.
I don't think Jean does any real harm to her charges; I think she does
many of them a lot of good, in fact. What's more, I think the point of
view of the film is ambiguous: In one sense, Sandy (Pamela Franklin)
is the moral center, & she sees Jean as a menace to naive girls who
idolize her. But throughout the movie, Jean's enemies are mostly a
bunch of busybody, inept bureaucrats who don't treat the children with
any real understanding, whereas several of Jean's lessons are filled
with passionate conviction & elevated respect for & awe in art &
culture. On the first day of class, Jean takes down a poster of a
contem****ary politician & replaces it with a painting of Giotto. What
student these days wouldn't cheer on such a gesture?
>The hero is the principal (Celia Johnson) who does what she can do to put
a
>stop to the destructive misbehavior of Miss Jean Brodie.
Yes, & Miss Mackay (great performance by Johnson) is a purse-lipped,
dessicated mummy of a headmistress: She infantilizes the students & is
shocked by any display of individuality or contre-gré methods. She is
clearly envious of Jean's command over the girls (she may even be
***ually jealous), & is fully aware that Jean is an all-around finer
scholar than either she herself or the rest of her staff.
>Our villain is so morally and intellectually bankrupt that she even
wor****ps
>the Italian fascist Benito Mussolini.
Oy. Jean is an intelligent, cultured woman with advanced ideas (the
primacy of art & of the individual over the blandly bureaucratized
state), but she's also barmy. Besides, the film takes place in the
early 1930s, before much of the world regarded Mussolini (or even
Hitler) as a world menace. In that light, I think it's a shameful
decision on the part of Neame, the director, to end the
"assassination" scene (Brodie's downfall) with Sandy walking calmly
away & then to cut to the schoolchildren & faculty singing "Nunc
dimittis."
This is how I "read" the film.
____
I suppose I'd be described as a raw egg, the
binding factor, at least in a musical sense.
-- Chris McVie
|
