Drama

Music

Romance

Goodbye, Mr. Chips

APJAC Productions

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer British Studios

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

United Kingdom

English

Peter O'Toole

Petula Clark

Michael Redgrave

George Baker

Siân Phillips

Michael Bryant

Jack Hedley

Alison Leggatt

Jenny Runacre

Clinton Greyn

Barbara Couper

Michael Culver

Elspeth March

Clive Morton

Ronnie Stevens

Mario Maranzana

John Gugolka

Michael Ridgeway

Tom Owen

Michael Audreson

Julian Barnes

Pierre Bedenes

Gillian Blake

Leo Britt

Nicholas Frankau

Gary Graham

Elspet Gray

Patricia Hayes

Mark Danvers Heron

Barbara Knox

Lawrence Lambert

Jeremy Lloyd

Craig Marriott

Jack May

John Moulder-Brown

James Payne

Jeremy Ranchev

Stephen Reed

Robert Rietti

Sheila Steafel

Royston Tickner

Richard Vernon

Raymond Ward

Robert Wisepart

Herbert Ross

James Hilton

Terence Rattigan

John Williams

George Blackler

Ivy Emmerton

Bill Lodge

Colin Jamison

Jan Jamison

David W. Orton

Dennis Hall

Dominic Fulford

Dickie Bamber

Eamonn Duffy

Bob Howard

Dusty Symonds

Gary White

Charles Torbett

John Bramall

John Poyner

J.B. Smith

A.W. Watkins

Brian Hickin

Van Allen James

John Streeter

Betty Adamson

Jimmy Turrell

Brian West

Kenneth Atherfold

Dennis Fraser

Frank Wardale

Robert Willoughby

John Grover

Michael R. Sloan

Ian Fraser

William Saracino

Jack Clegg

Gordon Langford

David Lindup

Rita Davison

Nora Kaye

Peter Perkins

Alexander De Grunwald

Norma Garment

Leslie Bricusse

Arthur P. Jacobs

Mort Abrahams

Oswald Morris

Ralph Kemplen

Irene Howard

Ken Adam

Maurice Fowler

Julie Harris

Reg Bream

Mickey Lennon

CinemaSerf

I suppose if you are going to reimagine the classic 1939 version of this story, you have to ditch some of that film’s most charming elements and bring it up to date. That’s what Herbert Ross and Leslie Bricusse have done here and for the most part it sort of works. Peter O’Toole takes on the role of the fastidious Latin master at the all-boys “Brookfield” school where he is neither much liked by the staff nor much respected by the pupils. It’s on a trip to London to see a show that he meets it’s star “Katherine” (Petula Clark) but he puts his foot in his mouth rather. On a trip to Pompeii, he encounters her again and this time the seeds of something special are planted. Their return to his school exposes both of them to changing attitudes towards himself and her that tests their blossoming relationship and his professional commitment to something he’d hitherto given his life to and with the Second World war now also looming, there are significant readjustments required to attitudes at the school that will see the final demise of the more traditional class system and the end of an era that, following a wartime tragedy, leaves “Chips” adrift in a world with which he is unfamiliar. It’s a well produced drama with plenty of attention to the detail, but it has lost much of the blue Danube romance of the Robert Donat and Greer Garson version. The “Katherine” character here is much more robust, independent and doubtless a better fit for the late 1960s, but for me the modernisation rendered this a bit disappointingly functional. I also found it lacked a killer musical number as neither “Fill the World with Love” nor “You and I” really stick in the mind for long after their various reprises throughout the film. Maybe I’m a sucker for the original sentiment, but though I enjoyed this enough, it is not a film that tugs at the heartstrings the same way nor does it evoke that sense of declining empire and relevance that added such poignancy before. There is an engaging chemistry, though, between O’Toole and Clark - she certainly knows how to hold a note and it’s a competent reversioning that’s hard not to like.

Goodbye, Mr. Chips Official Trailer #1 - Peter O'Toole Movie (1969) HD

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Goodbye, Mr. Chips

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Cast

Peter O'Toole

Petula Clark

Michael Redgrave

George Baker

Siân Phillips

Michael Bryant

Jack Hedley

Alison Leggatt

Jenny Runacre

Clinton Greyn

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