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Goodbye, Mr. Chips

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6.7/10 • 39

1969-11-052h 35m

DramaMusicRomance

He is a shy schoolmaster. She is a music hall star. They marry and immediately have 283 children...all boys!

Academy Award-honoree Peter O'Toole stars in this musical classic about a prim English schoolmaster who learns to show his compassion through the help of an outgoing showgirl. O'Toole, who received his fourth Oscar-nomination for this performance, is joined by '60s pop star Petula Clark and fellow Oscar-nominee Michael Redgrave.

Directors
Herbert Ross
Editors
Ralph Kemplen

Top Billed Cast

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  1. Peter O'Toole

    Peter O'Toole

    Arthur Chipping

  2. Petula Clark

    Petula Clark

    Katherine Bridges

  3. Michael Redgrave

    Michael Redgrave

    The Headmaster

  4. George Baker

    George Baker

    Lord Sutterwick

  5. Siân Phillips

    Siân Phillips

    Ursula Mossbank

  6. Michael Bryant

    Michael Bryant

    Max Staefel

  7. Jack Hedley

    Jack Hedley

    William Baxter

  8. Alison Leggatt

    Alison Leggatt

    Headmaster's Wife

  9. Jenny Runacre

    Jenny Runacre

Reviews1

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CinemaSerf Avatar

CinemaSerf

Mar 23, 2025

7/10

I suppose if you are going to reimagine the classic 1939 version of this story, you have to ditch some of that film’s most charming elements and bring it up to date. That’s what Herbert Ross and Leslie Bricusse have done here and for the most part it sort of works. Peter O’Toole takes on the role of the fastidious Latin master at the all-boys “Brookfield” school where he is neither much liked by the staff nor much respected by the pupils. It’s on a trip to London to see a show that he meets it’s star “Katherine” (Petula Clark) but he puts his foot in his mouth rather. On a trip to Pompeii, he encounters her again and this time the seeds of something special are planted. Their return to his school exposes both of them to changing attitudes towards himself and her that tests their blossoming relationship and his professional commitment to something he’d hitherto given his life to and with the Second World war now also looming, there are significant readjustments required to attitudes at the school that will see the final demise of the more traditional class system and the end of an era that, following a wartime tragedy, leaves “Chips” adrift in a world with which he is unfamiliar. It’s a well produced drama with plenty of attention to the detail, but it has lost much of the blue Danube romance of the Robert Donat and Greer Garson version. The “Katherine” character here is much more robust, independent and doubtless a better fit for the late 1960s, but for me the modernisation rendered this a bit disappointingly functional. I also found it lacked a killer musical number as neither “Fill the World with Love” nor “You and I” really stick in the mind for long after their various reprises throughout the film. Maybe I’m a sucker for the original sentiment, but though I enjoyed this enough, it is not a film that tugs at the heartstrings the same way nor does it evoke that sense of declining empire and relevance that added such poignancy before. There is an engaging chemistry, though, between O’Toole and Clark - she certainly knows how to hold a note and it’s a competent reversioning that’s hard not to like.

Media

  • Goodbye, Mr. Chips poster
  • Goodbye, Mr. Chips poster
  • Goodbye, Mr. Chips poster
  • Goodbye, Mr. Chips poster

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Status
Released
Original Language
English
Budget
$9,000,000.00
Revenue
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Keywords
based on novel or bookboarding schoolworld war iiforbidden lovevacationloveteacher student relationshipteachingschoolteacherteacher heromusic hallboys' schoolschool life