Goodbye, Mr. Chips

Sam Wood, 1939, bw (8.6*)
Based on the novel by James Hilton (Lost Horizon), this is perhaps the quintessential Hollywood film about a teacher, in this case a Mr. Chipping, wonderfully played by Robert Donat in a career defining role, an uptight professor at a private boys school. Over time, he opens up and gains the affection of literally thousands of students in a heartwarming story of transformation. On a vacation (and around age 50), he meets the enchanting Greer Garson (half his age, in the supporting role that made her a star) hiding out from a storm, and she changes his life, as well as giving him his nickname, Mr. Chips.

Perhaps the one flaw in the film is that we get a lot of detail in the beginning and end of his teaching career, but the central portion that forms the core of his adult life is shown as a montage of calendars and images of time passing in just a minute or so. I felt cheated of the stories that would have made the students revere and honor him. We're visually led to believe that simply time moving by is responsible.

Mr. Chips was nominated for 7 Oscars®, including picture, director, screenplay, actress, actor - and many today feel that it was a better picture than winner Gone With the Wind. Robert Donat did receive a well-deserved best actor award, upsetting the more popular Clark Gable. Don't bother with the musical remake starring Peter O'Toole; it's one of those that lends argument to prohibiting remakes at all.

I suppose were I to rank the top films of 1939: (1) Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (2) Goodbye, Mr. Chips (3) The Rains Came (4) The Wizard of Oz (5) The Women
The Rains Came actually won the special effects Oscar® over favorites Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind, for it's incredible depiction of an earthquake, dam collapse, and flood in India in 1916 - it's an underrated and under-viewed classic, featuring perhaps Myrna Loy's finest dramatic performance.

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The Women

George Cukor, 1939, bw (8.0*)
This pleasant bit of fluff is one of the first, most archetypal of the all-talk films, where the characters don’t do a lot actually, they just talk about their lives, a style later copied by The Big Chill, Diner, Metropolitan, and My Dinner With Andre. This group of women congregate at a dude ranch out west, and discuss their philandering husbands, new romances, and other 'women's issues'.

What made this film was the expert direction of master George Cukor (My Fair Lady) and the cast: Rosalind Russell, Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Paulette Goddard, Bary Boland, Joan Fontaine, Marjorie Main, Hedda Hopper (as a columnist, naturally; she always plays herself). The dialogue and script are witty, never dull, and though hard to classify as comedy or drama, or to give it’s flimsy stories much weight, it’s still a sparkling film to watch today, and likely the first to feature an all-female cast - no doubt it's a film of a stage play, it has that look as a film.

In a year considered one of Hollywood’s best, this film stood above the more celebrated, along with Goodbye, Mr. Chips and The Rains Came.

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The Rains Came

Clarence Brown, 1939, bw (8.2*)
Very good early film about India, with some very expensive special effects for the time, which won an Oscar over Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind for those; they are of King Kong quality. Tyrone Power is an Indian doctor, trained in England naturally, doing his best to maintain dignity and help the poor citizens of Ranchipur. Myrna Loy is Lady Esketh, a woman of the world with too much time given her boring husband's negligence, so she sets her sights on the Indian doctor. H.B Warner and Maria Ouspenskaya play the local rulers, and Maria really shines here in another unforgettable performance. She seems to have been in nearly every film in those days; she was also in 39's Intermezzo.

The story really heats up during an earthquake sequence that leads a dam to collapse, then we see the special effects at work as thousands flee amid walls of water. This changes the lives of all involved, and Loy goes from her comedic sarcasm to a woman with a serious purpose in life, in perhaps her finest dramatic performance. There are other subplots of romance here but they take a backseat to the major disaster unfolding. This is a surprisingly good drama considering it gets lost among the other 1939 films, but perhaps after Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, it's up there with the other dramas of that year to me.

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The Wizard of Oz

Victor Fleming, 1939 (8.4*)
The GOOD news: the remastered colors will blow you away, all fans should see this new dvd version. Toto and the creepy flying monkeys were terrific, having a seemingly gay lion (Bert Lahr's only memorable role) was a stroke of comic genius, Margaret Hamilton was the perfect evil witch, Frank Morgan the perfect wizard, and I hope everyone got the reference to poppies putting them to sleep and snow waking them back up.

Otherwise, everyone's favorite children's fantasy just could be the most overrated film of all time, #18 on our Top Ranked survey (I'd put it about 200th). This actually followed the classic animated Snow White by two years, which makes me wish that Disney had at least had a hand in this. Can you imagine this film if they made it today, with the technology used for Lord of the Rings? My problems began in my own childhood, thinking this was "one giant-sized kid", even bigger than the witch - one would think they had good enough child actors to have cast this movie appropriately. Judy Garland looked like she was in her 20's (though just 17), but this was supposed to be a little girl, maybe ten years old. It always seemed to me that "Over the Rainbow" was just thrown into this movie, didn't fit the rest of the film's music (its certainly not a kid's song), and seems like it should have been in Meet Me in St. Louis instead (a more appropriate vehicle for Garland, imo). Buddy Ebsen was supposed to be the tin man but had a reaction to the metallic makeup and dropped out. Could't they get Donald O'Connor? (Don't get me wrong, I'm a Garland fan since I love great singers, I just prefer her in other roles: St. Louis, and Star is Born; she's miscast in this, it's a popular choice, not an artistic one)

All that aside: This is great fun for kids, with lame humor (unless you're under 10) and very slow scenes, but with the "Yellow Brick Road" refrain to seemingly link it all together and keep it moving. In fact when the film came out, Harvard's awards dubbed it "the worst film of all time". Of course, that was 1939 and they didn't have many films to choose from. For kids and fans only, you know who you are, or if you just need something entertaining!

Update: upon considering the religious implications, I upped my rating a little. Did anyone else notice that the only other American Dorothy sees on her journey has set himself up as "god" in Oz, which rhymes with "Gods" by the way? He rules by fear and intimidation ("dare you question the great Oz?"), using magic (smoke, mirrors, illusions) to convince people he's something supernatural, then sends people on tasks in his name that he hopes will get them killed so he's done with them and won't have to deliver anything material. Then when Dorothy's group succeeds, all he has to offer is homespun advice and common sense wisdom, and they have nothing more than what they already had, only self-realization. This could be nothing but a satire of religion to me (or history of religions), or at least America's version of religion; perhaps the way U.S. politicians use religion to scare and control people, and to get votes. I'm not sure of author Frank Baum's original intentions way back when he wrote this, but it sure seems that this is a clear parody of how we are controlled, even in this 'new millenium'.

[Updated: 7.29.09]

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Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

Frank Capra, 1939, bw (9.1*)
The perfect film for an inauguration and new era of optimism, Mr. Smith is Frank Capra’s idealistic tribute to the spirit of democracy. Jimmy Stewart is a populist Senate candidate, one who vows to bring government back to the citizens and fight for what’s right, even standing up to his own party in Congress. He is appointed to office, and his political naivity is tested by the corruption he uncovers.

Naturally he becomes hated in Washington by those in power but at the same time he’s also a hero of the people, and especially his girlfriend, played by Jean Arthur, who helps him legally in his fight. We need more films like this, and Capra was the master of this type of optimistic Americana. Sadly, Capra's Magic Town, about a town used by pollsters to predict elections, is not available on dvd, but it's another political satire as well as a great look at small town America, self-awareness, and the nature of voters and the media. Mr. Smith is #128 on our top ranked films survey.

Note: according to Robert Osborne on Turner Classic Movies, the US Congress saw an advanced showing of this film and tried to ban it by offering Columbia 30% over the cost for the movie so they could destroy it, as it attacks political corruption in the Senate. Capra talked Columbia into showing it, that this was exactly the type of corruption the film was about, politicians who answer to special interests for money and not to the welfare of the citizens. Ironically, the movie was banned after release in Nazi Germany and communist USSR, so the US Congress was trying to side with those fascist governments re censorship! Live and learn people, our 'enemies' ideas are alive and well in the minds of those easily bought out for money, the same type of fascism prevails in all those that would censor individual expression and call it 'national security' or 'treason' or some such nonsense. They forget we were founded by 'treasonous revolutionaries' who risked death for our version of liberty, seven million laws and all, regulating everything we eat, drink, think, take as medicine, see in the media, or are allowed to say at work, school, or in public. Did I miss anything? Oh yeah: all travel is controlled by 'papers' (visas, passports, etc), and enforced by armed guards at all borders, and then inside those borders as well. It's a giant prison planet - where does freedom exist nowdays?

[Updated: 7.28.09]

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Gone With the Wind

Victor Fleming, 1939 (7.2*)
Best Picture (AA)
Much ballyhooed epic long considered the “most popular” movie is really just a too lengthy soap opera – it needs an hour-long trim as each scene runs on and on - with an overblown budget (and music score) and one good war scene: the train platform at Atlanta littered with hundreds of wounded and dying soldiers. Unfortunately, author of the Pulitzer-prize winning book Margaret Mitchell couldn’t convince Hollywood that it “couldn’t be filmed”; it is better as literature. Even at four hours, the film is just a synopsis of what seemed like decades in Scarlett’s life (maybe it was decades to read!). The film would have been better as a 10-12 hr miniseries, and with perhaps less-stereotypical characters all-around, not just the slaves either.

It’s ironic that the two leads, Scarlett O’Hara, played by Vivien Leigh in her Oscar-winning performance, and Rhett Butler, Clark Gable at his most wooden, are really two of the least likeable characters in the story. Each is arrogant, shallow, and self-centered, while their friends Melanie (Olivia de Haviland) and Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard) have the real humanity and heart, along with Oscar®-winning nanny Hattie McDaniel, who steals the film and received the only Academy Award for an African-American actor until Sidney Poitier roughly 25 years later, and the only woman until Whoopi Goldberg half a century later! Ironically, she’s really better as a comic actress yet her tearful scenes here likely tipped the voters.

Directed by Oscar®-winner Victor Fleming (The Wizard of Oz), the film’s plus is a great epic look, which ironically makes some of the faked studio scenes stand out more, like a carriage ride with Rhett and Scarlett in Atlanta before the war with an obviousy filmed backdrop moving at a different speed than they are, or the overused silouettes of actors against giant painted or filmed backdrops. This film also screams for widescreen, but alas, “Cinemascope” had not been invented yet so we’re forever stuck with the square 35mm image – but at least they used color, which the remastering has faithfully maintained. Winner of a then-record 8 Oscars, with 13 nominations.

Quote: As God is my witness, if I have to lie, cheat, steal, or kill, I shall never be hungry again. - Scarlett (apparently losing all ethics in a dog eat dog world!)

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