Goodbye Mr Chips

Goodbye Mr Chips
by Sam Wood

Goodbye Mr Chips
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Product details

Actor: Greer Garson, John Mills, Paul Henreid, Robert Donat, Terry Kilburn
Director: Sam Wood
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Original Language), Analog
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, HiFi Sound, NTSC, Original recording reissued
Release Date: 1998-09-01
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Publisher: MGM (Warner)
Studio: MGM (Warner)

VHS Movie Reviews of Goodbye Mr Chips

Movie Review: One of my very favorite movies!!!
Summary: 5 Stars

There's nothing like a black and white film and a love story that touches your heart! This is about true love and respect that was in a marriage, in days long-gone-by and the value of being a role model to young people.

Movie Review: I LOVE THIS MOVIE!!!
Summary: 5 Stars

If you've never seen this movie, see it!! Then buy it!! It's an absolutely wonderful movie for all ages. It centers around a teacher and all the years that he spends with his students. It stars Robert Donat who won an Academy Award for this role. He meets the love of his life played by Greer Garson and his shy life changes for the better. I am a movie buff and I especially enjoy movies from the 1930's to 1940's black and white films. Look out for Terry Kilburn's wonderful performance...he appeared as Tiny Tim the year before in "A Christmas Carol". This is one of my favorite movies...the kind they don't make anymore!!P.S. You'll need your tissues handy; it's a tear-jerker!!!

Movie Review: goodbye mr chips
Summary: 5 Stars

Bring back the cane thats what i say great movie that style cannot be repeated in this age of blood and guts thank god for dvds.

Movie Review: Well made DVD
Summary: 4 Stars

I was worried that the age of the movie would show on this DVD. That is it would show the deterioration of the age of the movie. I was pleasantly surprised at how well it was done.

The only thing that could have made it better was to colorize it. One teen son enjoyed this with me. The other hates to watch B/W. And for the sake of a wider audience, colorizing would help this film.

I must have grown a lot since I saw this on TV years ago. I didn't cry this time.

Movie Review: Had the wrong expectation, but enjoyed it anyway
Summary: 3 Stars

I'd been vaguely aware of this movie and its reputation as a revered classic all my life, but until two nights ago, when I selected it from the "free" movies list on Comcast cable, I'd never seen it. In my naivete I didn't even know that Robert Donat was in the starring role, and, being equally honest, didn't have a very clear idea of exactly who he was anyway.

It's hard to say this, but, very truthfully, I thought that both this story and Robert Donat in particular were a bit out of their depth when compared to the other recognised movie titans of the period. That said, I feel that many similar movies and the actors in them were products of a dominant "zeitgeist" of the 1930's that often included simplistic, stereotypical representations of subject material and formulaeic plot development and acting styles. This moviemaking period was often characterised by sudden introductions, hasty plot developments, and unrealistically quick resolutions. Much relied on the assumption that the audience would be willing to supplant disbelief with a protracted set of assumptions even more readily than willingness to suspend it.

These 1930's-esque "norms" are especially binding on this movie, based as it already is on the strait-laced, ultra-ritualised realm of an English upper-class boys' preparatory school. Because so many of both the setting, and behavioral parameters of the actors are "cast in stone" by the background of the situation in which they occur, there is little ability to develop any interesting spontaneity, and that's most likely what we who are reviewing this movie in the early 21st Century mean when we say that it's quite predictable, and "schmaltsy". It is.

Actually, the only really surprising moments in the movie come when Mr Chipping takes a whirlwind vacation with one of his fellow instructors to the Alps, where he meets his future wife in a series of peculiarly contrived scenes that return quickly to the "settled order" of the movie, and so the spark of the unexpected is quickly extinguished. If this sounds like rubbish, consider the death of the wife in childbirth. If you are in the least perceptive, you know that his wife will die in childbirth within seconds of the appearance of the family doctor. There's less than two minutes of "run-up" to this stunning, heart-breaking event. She's declared in trouble and then dies, all within no more than four minutes. The climax of this tragic turn of events is rushed out so quickly that there isn't even a farewell scene between the man and his beloved wife.

Perhaps you see that my disappointment is not so much with this one movie as it is with an entire method of movie-making. "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" is not, repeat, not a bad movie, but in my opinion it certainly is not a great movie, especially when compared with ground-breaking contemporary films of its era like, "Gone With The Wind", "Wizard of Oz", "Gunga Din", "Grapes of Wrath", "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington", "Citizen Kane", etc.

Now that I've conveyed the impression of being an unsentimental snot, I'll tell you that, in spite of myself, I had tears in my eyes during some of the scenes. I loved the atmosphere of the background setting of the old English boys' school and was reminded of "The Priory School" (one of the superb episodes of "The Return of Sherlock Holmes", starring the late Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke). Quite a number of the scenes showing developments in the boys' lives were quite moving, especially as they were being dragooned off to their deaths in one war after another....

So, by all means, see the movie and I hope you enjoy it. I hope to see it again myself. I also hope I've helped to clarify some things for you so that you won't have disappointment in your expectations.

Summary of Goodbye Mr Chips

One more terrific film from a terrific year for movies--1939, the year of Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, and Stagecoach, among others--Sam Wood's Goodbye Mr. Chips is a deeply stirring work starring Robert Donat as the old schoolmaster who looks back upon his life. Told mostly in flashbacks, the film wraps itself around a history of an older England as seen through the generations of boys who pass through Mr. Chips's classroom. Greer Garson is her usual classy, sexy-intelligent self as Donat's wife, their earlier courtship one of the film's highlights. Get out the Kleenex for this one. --Tom Keogh

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