The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie: A Review

THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE

A little learning is a dangerous thing, the saying goes. I do not think that Alexander Pope had Miss Jean Brodie in mind when he expressed that idea. However, when it comes to the title character in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, a little teaching is most certainly a dangerous thing.

Edinburgh, 1932. The Marcia Blaine School for Girls is starting a new term, with a mix of younger girls, returning students and the established faculty. Among those faculty members is Miss Jean Brodie (Maggie Smith), who is popular with her young girls. She is unorthodox in her teaching, rebelling against the strict and formal curriculum favored by Headmistress Miss Mackay (Celia Johnson). However, Miss Brodie is tenured and has technically done nothing to cause her dismissal. 

Miss Brodie has a group of girls who are her unofficial cult. They go on picnics and the theater together, eat separate from other girls, and take pride in being Brodie Girls. They are so fond of her and see her as the embodiment of all worldly wisdom that they do not question Miss Brodie's admiration for Benito Mussolini. Jean may wax rhapsodic over Il Duce, but she yearns for Mr. Teddy Lloyd (Robert Stephens), the art teacher whom she had a fling with despite his very Catholic marriage.

Lloyd may be married, but Miss Brodie is in her prime. She soon consorts with music teacher Gordon Lowther (Gordon Jackson), who is enamored of her, comes from a wealthy family and does want to marry her. Miss Brodie, however, keeps such talk at arm's length, convinced that it is her duty to continue molding the Brodie Set into her own image. As the year goes on, one of her students starts seeing something dangerous behind the elegant facade.

Sandy (Pamela Franklin) is put off by Miss Brodie attempting to mold another girl, pretty Jenny (Diane Greyson) as Lloyd's newest lover. It is not the morality that gets to Sandy. It is how Miss Brodie does not see Sandy as good mistress material. Another girl the shy, stuttering Mary McGregor (Jane Carr) has already caught Miss Brodie and Mr. Lloyd in a compromising position. For Mary, Miss Brodie nudges her student into joining her brother in Spain while he takes arms in the Spanish Civil War.

Soon, Miss Brodie and Mr. Lowther are caught up in a scandal that for once Miss Brodie is innocent of. The machinations from and opposed to Miss Brodie continue, until there are tragic deaths and a great fall for Miss Jean Brodie.

The effectiveness of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie comes the performances. It is a major credit to Maggie Smith in her Best Actress Oscar-winning performance that we do not end up hating Miss Jean Brody. She is arrogant, hypocritical, sometimes downright mean, and that does not count her worship for Mussolini and later on Francisco Franco. A major part of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie involves her Franco fixation. When Smith as Brodie talks worshipfully about Mussolini when showing slides of her Italian vacation, there is a sense that her admiration for Il Duce somehow slipped into downright love. She waxes rhapsodic about how Mussolini "brought birds back to Capri", giving him an almost mystical air. Miss Brodie is dangerous in some of her ideas, but logical in others.

She goes against keeping to a strict, regimented curriculum. Here, Miss Brodie shows us the positive side of teaching. In her attempts to mold her students into loving and supporting fascism, we see the negative side. 

Smith excels as Brodie, who balances being genuinely caring for her students while leading them down sometimes dark paths. She tells her Brodie girls that a mature man can find love in a young girl, a very dangerous comment. Her assessment of both Sandy and Jenny are accurate, but Brodie cannot apply her own insight within. This is a complex, contradictory woman, one you should not like but cannot bring yourself to hate. 

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie also has strong performances from the rest of the cast. Pamela Franklin is effective, sometimes chilling, as Sandy, the young and smart woman who does battle with her onetime heroine. Her final confrontation with Brodie is quietly and effectively directed by Ronald Neame. Sandy is no saint, becoming Lloyd's newest mistress almost to spite Miss Brodie and her assessment that she could not seduce a man. That, I think, is one of the qualities in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie: how the people are almost wholly complicated, with virtues and failings that lead them to their fates. 

Neame got his cast to deliver great performances. Celia Johnson's relatively small role as Headmistress Mackay also balances good and evil. She is passive-aggressive with Brodie, but she too cares about the wellbeing of the students. The film cleverly builds up a scene where Miss Mackay attempts to push Miss Brodie out with misinterpreted information. Earlier in the film, we saw two of the Brodie Girls write a false love letter between Brodie and Lloyd which dragged Lowther into things. When presented with the newly discovered letter, one almost cheers on Miss Brodie, who for once is innocent.

Stephens' lustful Lloyd and Jackson's lovestruck Lowther are the yin and yang for Miss Brodie, playing them off the other in her wicked sex games. "You're a frustrated spinster taking it out in idiotic causes and dangerous ideas," Lloyd berates Brodie at the dance. He's grown tired of her playing games with the men in her life and now is able to tell her off.  It is almost like a release for him from the woman who has ensnared his thoughts and body for too long.

Both Carr and Grayson do fine work in the film as the tragic Mary and pretty Jenny respectively. One character, Ann Way's appropriately named Miss Gaunt, looks downright terrifying.  

Screenwriter Muriel Spark, adapting Jay Presson Allen's play and novel, has moments of cleverness within the film. At the closing term dance, Miss Brodie is almost the literal scarlet woman, the only teacher to wear color while everyone else is cloaked in primarily grey tones. Spark also gives the characters great lines to read. Commenting on his past mistresses, Sandy tells Lloyd, "I'm not sure about God but I am sure about witches".

In some ways, Miss Jean Brodie would be admirable. She cares about teaching and about her students, particularly her cult of favorites. However, those qualities also reveal a dangerous side to Miss Jean Brodie. She uses her influence, not for good, but for herself. She takes pride in molding young women, but her aim is to mold them into clones, not individuals. Yet, despite that, it is again a credit that we do not come to despise Miss Jean Brodie. We do not love her or are sympathetic to her ideas. Rather, we see her and those around her as complex and contradictory, the way all of us are. She loves the arts, and she loves Mussolini. She is in her prime but wastes it on keeping men that love her at bay.

With a standout performance from Maggie Smith, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is time well invested.

DECISION: B+