Goodbye, Mr. Chips

A film set in an English boarding school. Charles Chipping is a young master. He arrives at Brookfield. The year is 1870. His first lesson goes badly. The boys do not listen and they laugh. He decides to be hard. He imposes discipline and silences the class. Years pass. He is a good teacher but not liked. Strict, distant, and without a joke. A housemastership comes up. He does not get it. One summer a friend takes him to Austria. He meets a woman on a mountain. Katherine is much younger. She travels by bicycle and lives on her own. The two marry. She comes to the school. From there the film is a story of change. Katherine talks to the boys. She has them to the house, gives them tea, and learns their names. Chipping changes too. He starts making jokes. The boys give him a name: Chips. Then Katherine dies. In childbirth. The narrative passes over it quickly. Chips stays at the school. For years. Generations pass. The same surnames come back; their fathers were his pupils. What the narrative is interested in is not education but continuity: its idea is that a man's whole life passes in one building, and that after a time everyone who passes through it belongs to him. The war comes. The boys' names are read out from the casualty lists. Chips is called back after retiring. The masters have gone to the front and the school is empty. He becomes headmaster. The last section is at a bed. Robert Donat won the best actor Oscar; the competition that year was strong. It is Greer Garson's first film and she was nominated too. The source is James Hilton's short novel. It was shot in England. Sam Wood directed. Robert Donat, Greer Garson, Terry Kilburn and Paul Henreid are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes classic English school films and emotional biography. Who it is not for: anyone looking for hardness; the narrative deepens no conflict and stays warm throughout.