The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

A film set in a girls' school in Edinburgh. The year is 1932. The Marcia Blaine school is conservative and orderly. Jean Brodie teaches there. She does not care about the syllabus. She talks about what she chooses: art, Italy, love, beauty and her own life. She tells the class a phrase: she is in her prime. She selects a group of girls. Four of them. She gives them special attention. She has them to her house, takes them to the theatre, and shapes them. From there the film is a story of influence. The girls grow. Sandy, Jenny, Monica and Mary. Jean Brodie has political views. She admires Mussolini; she describes him as a hero. Then Franco. The girls listen. There are men as well. Teddy Lloyd teaches art and is married. Gordon Lowther teaches music and is single. Jean runs a relationship with both. The headmistress wants her out. She has been looking for a reason for years. What the narrative is interested in is not education but ownership: its idea is that she believes she is opening a world to the girls and is in fact placing them inside her own story. Sandy sees it. She begins an affair with Teddy Lloyd and does it as a move. There is Mary as well. Under Jean's influence she goes to Spain and dies there. The narrative puts that directly on Jean's account. Sandy goes to the headmistress. She gives her the reason she needs to dismiss her. The reason is politics. The last scene is in a classroom. Maggie Smith won the best actress Oscar for the part. The source is Muriel Spark's novel; the book was adapted first for the stage and then for the screen. Robert Stephens was Maggie Smith's husband at the time. Ronald Neame directed. Maggie Smith, Robert Stephens, Pamela Franklin, Celia Johnson and Gordon Jackson are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes British character drama and performance-centred film. Who it is not for: anyone looking for a sympathetic centre; the narrative does not present the teacher as a heroine and does not defend her to the end.