Most of us have an example of a teacher who was more than just an instructor, who went beyond that to become a mentor and once in a great while, a friend. It’s a rare relationship, and the character of one such teacher is explored in 1939’s Goodbye, Mr. Chips. As far as it goes, it’s a good film. Unfortunately, it doesn’t go far enough for me.

The thrust of the story is how Mr. Chipping learns to let his guard down and learns to become a friend and mentor to the children of the prestigious Brookfield boarding school, where he teaches. Instrumental to this change in the stoic and reserved teacher are his colleague Max Staefel (played quite well by Casablanca’s Paul Henreid) and the love of his life, the beautiful and charming Katherine. Fast forward thirty years or so and, after a brief stint as headmaster during the war, Mr. Chips (as he’s now known) reflects on his wonderful life with his surrogate family at Brookfield.

I suppose my high expectations are to blame, but I kept wondering when the really good stuff was going to start. I expected more from a film that everyone speaks so reverently of, but there really isn’t much more there. Every time it feels like a deeper level is about to be explored, we move forward in time, usually by at least a decade. For example, when Chips loses his life’s love (for reasons I won’t tell you) we get about two minutes of quiet loss and then dash forward, leaving behind the depth of emotion that was about to surface.The film spends a brief time looking at World War I, but after we learn a quick lesson about the horrors of war and how friendships may extend past that boundary, we’re off to the future.

Understand, I’m not saying Goodbye, Mr. Chips is a bad film. It’s just that it felt like it was on the cusp of being great but never quite reached that level. The performances of Robert Donat and the lovely Greer Garson are wonderful, though I’m not a fan of Donat’s dottering old man, cackling and jumping and chewing up the set. He was much more effective in Mr. Chips’ earlier, more reserved personality.

Sam Wood’s direction is serviceable, but perhaps he lacked the space to tell the deeper story I was expecting. (Or maybe he just didn’t have my expectations in mind when he made the film.) An entire lifetime is a lot to get through in two hours, after all.

Perhaps the reverence with which people treat the film has less to do with the actual production and more to do with honoring the teachers and mentors who have touched the lives of the audience. The flaws (as I see them) are overshadowed by the universal nature of Mr. Chips’ role. Mine was a second grade teacher who like Mr. Chips seemed to know and love all of her students and who, if we were to meet on the street today, I’m sure would remember me (fondly, I hope) and my little second grade quirks.

In that sense, then, Goodbye, Mr. Chips is a success. It’s been remade several times, once with Peter O’Toole in the lead role. It’s been a cinema favorite for nearly seventy years, and will be as long as mentors continue coming forward to help shepherd the next generation of children.

Which reminds me, there’s one thing I really didn’t like about this film. Terry Kilburn (at left), who played several generations of Colley boys, gives the last little line. Holy crap, did that kid freak me out.

Seriously.

I had nightmares.

Season 12, I’m Goin’ to Praiseland
“Goodbye, Mr. Flanders!”

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Since starting this blog I’ve discovered that I love suspense movies. LOVE them. Can’t get enough of them. I’m not sure exactly why I never knew that. Maybe it’s because you don’t see them made that much anymore. I suppose it’s much easier to throw some gore and horror on the screen than to construct a taught film to keep the audience on the edge of their seats. Sadly, that means movies like Sorry, Wrong Number are harder to come by.

The story unfolds as Leona Stevenson (Barbara Stanwyck, below), bedridden daughter of a millionaire, sits in bed attempting to get ahold of her husband (Burt Lancaster) by telephone. After abusing the operator for awhile, she is mistakenly connected to an open line and hears two men scheming about a murder to be committed that night. But before she can find out who they are or where, she’s disconnected and cannot be re-connected. The remainder of the movie sees Leona trying to find her husband and the soon-to-be murderer, or at least the soon-to-be victim, before it’s too late.

What a great setup. Think of the possibilities with a subject who, confined to one room with one connection to the outside world, learns more and more about a murder that hasn’t yet happened but will very soon, with no one believing her or able to help her. The tension, emphasized marvelously with the use of shadow and circling cameras, makes me smile even now.

And it was a pretty good movie, too.

A couple problems kept Sorry, Wrong Number from being great. First, Stanwyck’s acting is a bit over-the-top for my taste. It was eye-rolling material for the first half of the movie, but as we came closer to the climax and Leona became more desperate, the performance became more and more appropriate.

Secondly, too much of the film was shown in flashback. Regularly moving the focus from that what’s going on in that one bedroom almost neuters the effect of her desperation. Instead of the audience sharing Leona’s panic, we spend time learning about the her and her husband’s past. Their courtship and other details of their lives are fitted between horrific calls and desperate pleas. Rather than focusing like a laser on what’s going on in that panicked moment, the film relaxes into the past, and while we learn important information from the past, there certainly must have been another way to do it that achieved a tighter feel.

I say that because I know it was done tighter. Sorry, Wrong Number started life as a 30-minute radio play with Agnes Moorehead (left, later of Bewitched fame) in the lead role and little other cast. After success on the radio, writer Lucille Fletcher expanded it to three times its original length to fill out a film’s timing (accounting for all the flashbacks). In the radio version, we know very little of Leona’s husband and spend all of our time in the bedroom as she dials and redials (and redials) the operator. Moorehead is fabulous in the lead role and repeated the performance on the radio several times over twenty years.

My suggestion would be to go with the radio program for the original version of the story. podango (a site that old time radio fans should explore). It’s about 30 minutes long. Take a listen by going here.

Without giving away the ending to everyone who didn’t listen to the audio (you know who you are), I will tell you that it blew my mind that they had the guts to do it. I sat there, eyes like saucers, thinking Did they just do what I think they did? Blew. My. Mind.

I love that feeling.

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