GOOD-BYE, MR. CHIPS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 31, 26 January 1940, Page 34

GOOD-BYE, MR. CHIPS

(M.-G.-M.) This is one of the handsomest tributes ever paid to the English public school system and the tradition of the old school tie. Some cynics may be capable of cheap sneers, but they will find it difficult; for the film, by the grace of good direction and better acting, is almost as gentle and kindly and sincere as the little book by James Hilton, from which it is taken. This is not. to say that it is a flawless film. I have called it a little book; but it is a long film — a very long film, even by M.-G.-M. standards. And there, I ‘think, is its only really noticeable fault: James Hilton did not write enough to fill two hours of screening time, and so they have had to improvise. They have improvised brilliantly, but sometimes I found myself wishing that the long procession of years in Mr. Chips’s scholastic career would unroll just a little faster. But any film such as Good-bye, Mr. Chips, must stand or fall by its starring performance, and Robert Donat is never in need of props. This is not to disparage the supporting cast, which is large and talented: particularly Greer Garson, with her perfect "period" characterisaticn as Mr. Chips’s young wife. If there is such a thing as an "Edwardian" type of beauty, Miss Garson has it. The fact remains, though, that Donat makes this essentially a one-man show; which is as it should be, since the whole story is presented as the fireside musing of a man of 83, looking back on some sixty years of schoolmastering at Brookfield College — the boys who have come and gone, and then come again in the persons of their sons and grandsons, the games that have been lost and won, the wars that have been fought and left their mark on the school, the masters who have worked with him, and the wife who was his inspiration and whom he lost so soon. And as the memories of Mr. Chips flow gently across the screen they become somehow identified with memories of one’s own school days, of all school days, just as Mr. Chips himself becomes a composite of many schoolmasters we ourselves have known, For once, a film has caught the spirit as well as the letter of a book; just as Donat himself has caught the schoolmaster’s manner as well as the mannerisms of this particular schoolmaster. His performance is a masterpiece of sustained effort that is polished enough to seem almost effortless. Gone is the handsome, dashing hero of Monte Christo and of that other and unsuccessful version of a Hilton story, Knight Without Armour; instead we find an old-fashioned, whimsical, fastidious

and lovable elderly .pedagogue who has learnt the secret of turning boys into men, Some of his fans may not like the new Donat as much as the old, but Mr. Chips. will be remembered when his other films are forgotten. Picking Academy Award winners is a risky business; but Robert Donat now seems a better bet than most for 1939 honours, James Hilton has the happy and remunerative krack of writing stories capable of successful translation to screen, stage or radio, Listeners may remember "Good-bye, Mr. Chips" as an NBS radio play four years ‘ago. Last year Leslie Banks scored heavily in the stage version, in England. Hilton’s other famous novel, " The Lost Horizon," has been put on the air by the BBC as well as on the screen by Columbia. Not .yet released, is the Warners’ production of "We Are Not Alone," with Paul. Muni. So far, "Knight Without Armour" is Hilton’s only screen miss.