THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE

UK, 1968, 114 minutes, colour.
Maggie Smith, Robert Stephens, Pamela Franklin, Gordon Jackson, Celia Johnson.
Directed by Ronald Neame.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a very interesting film, both comic and tragic, containing a lot of wisdom and some sorrow.

Muriel Spark's novel was a short, witty and incisive book about a self-infatuated teacher of girls in a progressive Edinburgh school of the 30's. It traced the ideas and goals of Jean Brodie during the best years of her life and the hold she had on her girls, moulding their minds, hearts, personalities and running their lives for them until one of her girls put her theories of independence into practice and 'betrayed' her. The play, based on the book, started with Sandy, the betrayer, as a Poor Clare nun, and reminisced about Jean Brodie. The film version has a straightforward narrative, focussing entirely on Jean Brodie and omitting the Poor Clare sequel. The film captures the spirit of the book and English stage actress Maggie Smith (seen in The V.I.P.'s, Young Cassidy, Desdemona in Olivier's Othello, The Honey Pot, Hot Millions) gives a polished, rather stylised performance as Jean Brodie and unexpectedly won the 1969 Oscar for it. Pamela Franklin (who has grown up through The Innocents, The Lion, Our Mother's House) is excellently quiet and menacing as Sandy.

Robert Stephens (Maggie Smith's husband - Morgan, Cleopatra, Sherlock Holmes in Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes) is the painter Lloyd.

The film was directed by veteran director Ronald Neame (The Million Pound Note, The Horse's Mouth, Gambit, Scrooge).

1. Did you like Miss Jean Brodie? Do you think the makers of film wanted you to like her? Was she a good woman?

2. How dangerous was Jean Brodie? How dangerous can a school teacher be?

3. Comment on the facets of her character and her principles presented in the film: her affectation, snobbery, romanticism, her desire to be 'progressive', her belief in natural discipline, her interest in D. H. Lawrence, Nietzsche, Mussolini, Was she caricatured by the film - her poses, hands, voice, manners, drama (Hugh of Flanders)?

4. She said she was against the binding of thought (e.g, by the Catholic Church), yet she was unwilling to let others think differently from herself. What kind of personal (and blind) loyalty did she want from her followers?

5. Why did she value her prime? Why did she dedicate herself? (She wanted girls to be given her to put old heads on young shoulders and they - the creme de la creme - would be hers forever.)

6. What did her fantasies, her rationalisations and her visions for her girls reveal about her? She pictured herself as being used by Teddy Lloyd and yet she used Lloyd for Jenny Lowther as an outlet and never understood Sandy.

7. How did she reveal herself in her affected affront at accusations without proof, her spirit of skilful and self-righteous invective and her ruthless sense of dedication?

8. Teddy Lloyd - what kind of a man? Why was he frustrated? Why mediocre, middle-aged and second-rate as man and painter?

9. What kind of a man was Lowther? just weak and nice? What did Jean Brodie see in him?

10. The headmistress - conservative, subservient to the board, the type of authority and education that Jean Brodie abhorred?

11. Why did Jean Brodie admire Mussolini so much, also Franco? Why did she exalt Mary Mc Gregor into a heroine? What feeling did she have at Mary Mc Gregor's death? Sandy said she called her the full name, Mary Mc Gregor, only because she couldn't remember anything about her but wanted to mould her.

12. Sandy - dependable, unemotional, a spy; girlish, (the letter, the imitations), yet vengeful, involved with Lloyd but shocked at Mary Mc Gregor's death,

13. Jean Brodie was destroyed by someone who had learned her lessons, who thought for herself, judged. Jean Brodie thought of herself as a leader, a Duce and acted as a conqueror and so her downfall was betrayal and assassination. Why did Sandy betray her? (Jean Brodie told lies but told the girls to say nothing, 'Do as I say, not as I do.')

14. Jean Brodie kept up appearances when her dreams were frustrated. She built up everything and was left with nothing. Did you pity her at the end? Why?

15. Sandy was glad that Jean Brodie retorted to her betrayal with histrionics, proving that Sandy was right. Did Sandy think she was right? Do you think she had any regrets? note her face in the final frames of the film.

16. What did the film contribute to ideas on education concerning: children's wills, thinking for oneself, dependence, arrogance, manipulation, loyalty, information and developing taste and sensitivity?

17. The novel was written with shifts of time and brought the story to Sandy's conversion and entering the convent as a Poor Clare nun. The stage-play began with Sandy as a nun talking to an interviewer, and ended with Miss Brodie's suicide. Do you think the film should have used some of these ideas and techniques?