TOM BROWN’S SCHOOL DAYS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 81, 10 January 1941, Page 14

TOM BROWN’S SCHOOL DAYS

(RKO:)

[tT would be a pity if anyone is deterred from seeing "Tom Brown’s School Days " because he saw and liked " Good-bve Mr Chinc" and

thought this was just another schoolboy picture that couldn’t come up to it. "Tom Brown's School Days" is a different proposition-not because it is an old-time classic of the coaching days, but because it is primarily a bright boisterous schoolboy revel, and only secondarily a study of a great English headmaster, It must be more than 20 years since I read "Tom Brown’s School Days," but the story is so vividly a part of my childhood memories that I can recall many episodes to this day. The film has recaptured the spirit of the book. It may have been altered a little to give a sharper outline of Dr. Arnold of Rugby -I don’t know — but the only things I missed of Tom Brown's adventures were the paper chase and what I remember as an ultra-sentimental . episode of Tom in hospital. All the rest are there-Flashman the bully, Brooks the "Head of House" whom Tom hero-worshipped, the roasting and the blanket tossing, the fagging and the sending to "Coventry," the "murphies" at the school tuck shop, Harry East his great friend and coconspirator, the uproarious sing-song in "Big School" which followed the great Rugger match won by "School House," and so on, and so on, Schooldays were certainly full, happy and exciting for Tom Brown, and this film crams them all in. Parts struck me as odd; for example the exaggerated schoolboy code of honour enforced with the utmost rigidity. Common sense would surely suggest that bullies like Flashman be reported to the school authorities. But those episodes wete in the book, and I for one would not have had them removed. "Tom Brown’s School Days" has been read by generations of boys of British stock, and is a part of British education. The second merit of the film is that it shows just what the great Dr. Arnold did for Rugby and through his example at that school, for the whole public school system of England. His aim was for "decent courageous gentlemen," and he had to fight ignorance and prejudice pretty hard to get his ideas accepted. Sir Cedric Hardwicke plays the part of the headmaster of a great English school as such a man would be, dignified, without eccentric mannerisms, and never merely sentimental; hard and ruthless on occasions, but, above all, capable and dignified. One came away from the theatre with respect for what Arnold of Rugby must have been.

Freddie Bartholomew was, of course, a fairly obvious choice for the name part. The boy who did Harry East was good, and so were all the small parts, The fat: coachman who drove Tom Brown up to Rugby, with his high four-horse coach, might almost have been filmed at the time.