Movie: Goodbye Mr Chips

Could there be anything more quintessentially English than Goodbye Mr Chips? It’s the story of a beloved school master, Mr Chipping, and his long tenure at Brookfield School, a fictional British boys’ boarding school. Mr Chips, as the boys call him, is conventional in his beliefs and exercises firm discipline in the classroom.

It was a novella written by James Hilton and published in 1934 by Hodder & Stoughton (you can read the book here). It has been adapted for films, television, the theatre and radio.

The best of the lot is the 1939 film version by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer British Studios and starring Robert Donat. The screenwriters invented a scene that wasn’t in the book. It is the First World War and with so many masters away at the battlefront an aging Mr Chips is acting headmaster. One day he summons Burton to his study. Burton is a senior schoolboy (the actor playing him looks about thirty!). Mr Chips intones, ‘Burton, I understand you have been impertinent and disobedient to Mr Smith.’

Burton responds, ‘The whole crowd of masters here are a load of weak-kneed women.’ They should be fighting in the war.

‘Get over that chair,’ Mr Chips thunders. You can see what happens next in the clip below.

There is a little homily from Chips after the beating. He tells Burton, ‘Very soon now you will be an officer in France, you will need discipline from your men and to get that you must know what discipline is.’

So, there you have it. Very English: everyone knows their place and the world turns.

 Picture credits: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer British Studios

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