Goodbye, Mr. Chips (VHS)

1939, as I have prviously reviewed, was Holywood's "Vinatge Year." Up for Oscars were these classics:
"Dark Victory" w/Bette Davis, Geo. Brent, Geraldine Fitzgerald & Humphrey Bogart
"Gone with the Wind" w/Clark Gable, Vivian Leigh, Olivia de Haviland & Leslie Howard
"Love Affair" w/Irene Dunne & Charles Boyer
"Hunchback of Notre Dame" w/Charles Laughton & Maureen O'Hara
"Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" w/Jimmy Stewart & Jean Arthur
"The Philadelphia Story" w/Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant & Jimmy Stewart
"Ninotchka" w/Greta Garbo & Melvyn Douglas
"Stagecoach" w/John Wayne
"Wuthering Heights" w/Laurence Olivier & Merle Oberon
"The Wizard of Oz" w/Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Lionel Barrymoore et al....
and then there was this film, "Goodbye, Mr. Chips," with Robert Donat, Greer Garson & Paul Henreid.

Imagine how fierce the competition among that list of actors was! All of them literally deserved to win a Oscar. It was Robert Donat, a name so little known compared to the others in that long list, who went home with the golden statuette during the only year in Hollywood's history that this kind of competition ever happened!

Why did Donat get the AFI's accolades & the deepest respect from the most elite acting peers imaginable? See him in action as the young, middle age & elderly Latin teacher in a 550 year old British boy's boarding school, Brookfield.

He starts out as a painfully shy young English schoolmaster named Mr. Chipping. An ever so proper English gentleman, he's very traditional with his students & as a result, he's not very popular.

Enter fellow schoolmaster, Max (Paul Henreid), who insists that Chipping lighten up & hike the Tyrol Mtns. with him one Christmas vacation. Stuck alone in the fog, unable to get down the mountain, Chipping follows the voice of a woman until he meets a beautiful hiker not in distress as he presumed, Katherine Ellis (Greer Garson, in her first screen role).

It's love at first sight, but poor Chipping is too introverted to know or show it! Max moves their relationship along into a very happy marriage. Katherine renames her new husband Mr. Chips. Mrs. Chips is such a charmer & social butterfly with the faculty & students that she literally transforms the middle age Mr. Chips into the favorite of his pupils & idol of his faculty peers.

Nothing is missing from this film: comedy, tragedy, friendship, romnance, rivalry, history, war, gooseflesh & plenty of tears of joy & sadness.

Donat's facial expressions as a young schoolmaster, a middle age man bewildered by an unexpected romance & the immortalized stately, elderly retired man who reflects back over his life say everything that needs to be expressed. Donat encarnates Mr. Chips so convincingly that I will hold him every so respectfully in my heart most likely forever.

This film was true yesterday, rings true today & will still be true for the ages. Donat's performance is one of the greatest a man ever delivered in B&W in the early 20th century. It required one man to embody every kind of emotion imaginable & to express it in the ways that would convey it to audiences of all types. In 2008, 70 years after its release, "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" has stood the tests of time & endured with the assurance that tomorrow it will still be just as grand a treasure.

Though there are very few females cast in the film, it appeals to women because Donat, Garson & Henreid are all so warm & lovably good. The boys put on swell performances~