Dear Brigitte (1965) [VHS]

Dear Brigitte (1965) [VHS]
by Henry Koster

Dear Brigitte (1965) [VHS]

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Product details

Actor: Bill Mumy, Cindy Carol, Fabian, Glynis Johns, James Stewart
Director: Henry Koster
Cinematographer: Lucien Ballard
Producer: Henry Koster
Editor: Marjorie Fowler
Producer: Fred Kohlmar
Writer: Hal Kanter
Writer: John Haase
Writer: Nunnally Johnson
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Unknown)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
Running Time: 100 minutes
Release Date: 1998-09-01
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Publisher: 20th Century Fox
Studio: 20th Century Fox

VHS Movie Reviews of Dear Brigitte (1965) [VHS]

Movie Review: Dear Brigitte
Summary: 5 Stars

Fantastic film I loved it, the video is not of very good quality but for a film this age worth the purchase. I would love to get it on DVD

Movie Review: Despite assured performances, it all gets a bit icky at times...
Summary: 3 Stars

The film's main scheme has professor Stewart granting his mathematical-genius eight-year-old's fervent wish to meet Brigitte Bardot (then at the height of her sex appeal). The two go to Paris, and young Erasmus (Billy Mumy) is kissed by Bardot and given a puppy...

Prior to this, the boy's mathematical skills have been misappropriated by everyone, from his sister's boyfriend (Fabian), who needs he1p with homework, to a British con man (John Williams), who illegally wins gambling bets to alleged1y finance a humanitarian arts foundation... Fabian also comes up with another idea for Erasmus to pick racetrack horses...

Stewart is a poetic, whimsical college professor who wants the simple life with his wife on a rather primitive, decaying Mississippi riverboat home... Stewart's accordion skills are brought to life, even if briefly, as he insists that the entire family take up musical instruments... But the pre-teen son is tone deaf, and when he takes up painting he turns out to have no eye for color either... The retarded discovery that he is a math prodigy brings more trouble than satisfaction, as the perplexed Stewart sadly discovers...

Glynis Johns, who had been on the point of marrying Stewart in "No Highway in the Sky" back in 1951, was at last Stewart's wife in the film...

Bardot provided some diversion for the French press when she pronounced Stewart, then 57, "a gentleman with ageless sex appeal, enormous charm."

Movie Review: Funny with fine cast.
Summary: 5 Stars

Dear Brigitte is one of the funniest comedies from the 1960s, about a tone-deaf, color-blind boy genius with one interest: Brigitte Bardot. James Stewart plays professor Robert Leaf, a typical college professor (when speaking of college professors typical means liberal, but this was 40 years ago and labels change). Leaf teaches poetry, lives in a houseboat in San Francisco, vocally opposes nuclear power and progress in general. He has an original way to make the family stick together - family concerts. His daughter calls him square. Leaf's 8-year old son Erasmus is played by Billy Mumy (Sammy the Way Out Seal, Lost In Space, Bless The Beasts & Children, Three Wishes). Leaf hopes to find artistic genius of some sort in his only son, and nurtures him in music, painting, literature, etc. But Leaf is disappointed, to put it mildly, when it turns out Erasmus has a gift for math, can out-think the colleges newest computer, instantly compute horse-race winners. I don't want to give away too much of the plot, but Erasmus had been writing to Bardot regularly, and after the family comes to depend on his ability, his love-sickness causes a mental block. Glynis Johns (Father's Delicate Condition, The Cabinet of Caligari, Mary Poppins) plays Leaf's wife. Ed Wynn (Requiem For A Heavyweight, Mary Poppins) is a neighbor / captain / narrator. Other cast include Fabian, Cindy Carol, John Williams, Jesse White, Jack Kruschen, and James Brolin in an early bit part. Brigitte Bardot appears at the end.

Movie Review: a mildly entertaining comedy
Summary: 3 Stars

The best thing about this movie was Jimmy Stewart's acting and Brigitte Bardot's five minute or so cameo appearance. It is a rarity that you get a chance to see Bardot speak in English, i.e., without the dubbing.

Stewart plays the role of a poet and a somewhat unhapply professor at a large California University. His son played by Billy Mumy, the ubiquitous child actor of the 60's, is discovered to have extraordinary mathemetical skills. He also has an extraordinary crush on Bardot. What ensues is an implausable sequence of events; Mumy displaying more mathematical wizardry than a powerful mainframe computer, Mumy picking the winner of horse races and Mumy (with Stewart) taking a trip to France to meet with the inimitable Bardot.

Overall, this was not a great comedy but it was at least well acted and mildly entertaining.

Movie Review: Marvelous Fluff Starring Irrepressible Stewart
Summary: 4 Stars

Henry Koster's (Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation) Dear Brigitte (1965) is an absolutely charming family chronicle of an acclaimed poet Professor Robert Leaf's (James Stewart) personal, family, and professional difficulties once he learns that his youngest son has turned out to be a mathematical prodigy unbeknownst to him. Devastated by the realization that his son has developed talents in the dreaded sciences and failed miserably in his endeavors in playing the Tuba (he's tone deaf) and painting pictures (he's color blind), Professor Leaf attempts to halt all of the publicity of his son's newly discovered gifts, pointlessly seeks to find another of his son's gifts in the area he wants him to, and desperately tries to find a way to cope with son's new found celebrity. Ironically at the same time, Stewart's young son is secretly writing love letters to French actress Brigitte Bardot.

However irrelevant and inane this plot may sound to you, Dear Brigitte delivers with winning performances from John Williams, Glynis Johns, Cindy Carol, Cahrled Robinson, Jack Kruschen, and Bill Mummy, inspired mixtures of slapstick and situational humor, highly sophisticated banter, and nicely matured moral issues tightly packed into one mightily charming whopper of a family film.

Definitely not to be missed, even when you're thirty.

Write your own review

Summary of Dear Brigitte (1965) [VHS]

Prof. Robert Leaf (James Stewart), who teaches at a northern California college, wants his 9-year-old son, Erasmus (Billy Mumy), to follow in his footsteps as poet and lover of fine arts. Erasmus, unfortunately, is tone-deaf and color blind, but he's a whiz at math and can even outthink a supercomputer. Initially a disappointment to the old man, Erasmus eventually saves the day--and Dad's neck--when he picks a longshot winner at the race track. Dad repays the favor by taking Erasmus to meet his idol, none other than French sexpot Brigitte Bardot.

The third of Stewart's collaborations with director Henry Koster (after Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation and Take Her, She's Mine), this improbable mix of screwball comedy and preadolescent angst features Stewart at his scattered, discombobulated best. He's especially good at suggesting the academic's inability to cope out of his element. Prof. Leaf's victory comes from his realization that Erasmus is wonderful precisely because he doesn't mirror Dad's passions. --Glenn Lovell

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