Sparky and I are having a lovely morning.  He is napping by the fire, and I’m watching, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. 

While browsing online, someone mentioned this movie from 1969 as Maggie Smith’s break-out role.  She won an Academy Award for it.

Maggie Smith plays a woman with progressive attitudes teaching at a conservative all-girl school in Scotland.  The teacher, Miss Brodie is in her prime, so fashionable and fetching, spouting a bunch of romantic and leftist nonsense popular in the 1930’s.

The viewer just has to accept the premise that Miss Brodie is fetching.  Maggie Smith was 35, looks 45, and is supposed to be 30.  On the attractiveness scale, she’s a California 3, a Navy 8, an Ohio 5, which probably makes her a Scottish 9.

Old movies that take place in schools are interesting, as are Scottish movies.  The school, teacher and students are very different from the 1967 Sidney Poitier movie, To Sir, With Love, but the formal, old-school culture is similar.   A good sequel to both movies would be a mash-up where Miss Brodie is on staff with Mr. Thackeray.  Miss Brodie would be challenged to date a Black guy, but Poitier is very smooth.  In many ways, they are opposites, but that may have something to do with the era depicted in both movies.

Miss Brodie is teaching in the interval between world wars, and is infatuated with fascists.  She is very taken by Mussolini and Franco.  Since the movie filmed in England, 29 years after the Battle of Britain, mentioning that energetic fellow who just became the chancellor of Germany, might have been too much.

While Miss Brodie explains that Mussolini was a man of action and made Capri a sanctuary for birds, he was making plans to invade Ethiopia.  I bet she felt stupid a couple of years later.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie has depth and substance that modern movies lack.  Parts of it offend modern sensibilities, but everyone seems more intelligent and thoughtful than we would see today.  I enjoyed it, and would give it an 8/10.

The movie has a 7.6 IMDB rating, and is currently available on Youtube.

Lia in Brussels addresses the movie in greater depth.