DVDs in Review

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Ronald Neame, 1969)

Title: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Ronald Neame, 1969)

Release date: August 2 2010

Certificate: 12

Format: DVD

DVD RRP: £16.99

Rating: 4/5

Reviewed by Dave Lancaster

“I am in the business of putting old heads on young shoulders, and all my pupils are the crème de la crème. Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she’ll be mine for life. I am dedicated to you in my prime.” Read that sentence once and you may think of an inspiring, hard working educator. Read it again and you could picture a domineering, power mad battleaxe who believes herself to be the best. Both angles are depicted in ‘The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’.

Maggie Smith deservedly won an Oscar playing the title role – a fiery teacher at the Marcia Blaine School for Girls in Edinburgh who is transfixed by the delights of art and beauty and strives to pass on this dreamlike vision to her students, but, in doing so, depriving them of any ‘real life’ lessons.

The action in this solidly made adaptation of Muriel Spark’s celebrated novel takes place in the early 1930s, which isn’t conveyed particularly successfully with its direction, photography and use of musical score which is very much rooted in its 1960s production ethos. Still it hardly matters to the story itself.

This is mainly a tale about a woman putting on a front. In the classroom she is confident, assured and, as she affirms, “in her prime”, but at home her personal life is in need of an evaluation as she juggles the romantic propositions of two disparate men and struggles with the skeptics in the school (including the ever-brilliant Celia Johnson as the battleaxe headmistress).

Watch this enlightening film and then go back to the quote. See if Jean Brodie’s teaching style has affected your initial thought. Was it for the better?