Warm-heartedly sentimental, to these slightly jaundiced eyes overly sentimental fictional biopic (if that's not an oxymoron!) of grand old man Mr Chips and his journey from young and easily cowed teacher at Brookfield School to venerable old age as headmaster. These days it's a little hard to swallow the old English public school accents as quoth by schoolboy after schoolboy, especially when they forcedly laugh at Chips' gentle witticisms but in the end it's impossible not to warm to Robert Donat's skillful portrayal of a man who devotes his life to his pupils and the upholding of traditional educational values in the face of "progress" and against the background of changing times culminating in the bathetic readings out of fallen pupils and masters cut down in the carnage of World War 1. His short-lived happy marital interlude is sensitively rendered, opposite an empathetic Greer Garson until her untimely demise in childbirth and Paul Heinreid plays Chips' German friend and touring companion with gusto. But of course the film is a tour-de-force for Donat, skilfully aging his voice and mannerisms down the years and faithfully staying in character from first to last. The deathbed scene and closing cavalcade of Chips' past pupils is obviously meant to leave not a dry eye in the house but seems somewhat forced from this distance. That said, the film is earnest and heart - warming, very much, no doubt, its director's intention. Be true to your school indeed!
Review of Goodbye, Mr. Chips
