This treasure nearly derailed at its finale. The confrontation of Miss Brodie with her former pupil, Sandy, equals the thrill of the sword fight between Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham in the original "Robin Hood"--up to a point (no pun). Had Robin somehow clocked the sheriff on the head with a frying pan at the end, it would have rivaled the break in continuity that Jean made when she rushed out to yell, "Assassin! Assassin!" to the departing Sandy. It didn't fit Jean's character. Add in the echo chamber effect, and the scene really annoys.That said, the acting and writing more than compensate for that one stumble. Maggie Smith mesmerizes not only the heads on the young shoulders in her classroom but those on all shoulders in the audience. The dialog crackles with wit and poignancy, such that you don't want to miss a word. It rates a 10. This may be some of the best time in front of the TV that you'll spend, as long as your appreciate the creme d' la creme of cinematic drama.

"The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie" (1968) is the best stage play ever to be presented in movie form..a great movie.The charge that most modern day movies (and possibly all movies throughout history) are air-headed, no-content exercises in providing viewers with a clever light show along with interesting sound of different flavors is true enough.The best stage plays over history made us think, appealed to our mentality and education, and needed good actors to get the play writer's point off the stage and into the audience.Good set decoration and other visuals are nice to have, but not absolutely needed. The Globe Theater in Shakespeare's day had almost no "set decoration" of the type seen in modern times. The "groundlings" (many of whom were well educated and worthy audience members, the noble sort who used to buy "stand up in the back of the theater" 50 cent tickets for Broadway Theater NYC shows 60 years ago) sat on the dirt floor in front of the open air play presented in daylight hours outside before the age of electricity and artificial light, when plays could not be presented lit by candles, the only night-time illumination before Thomas Edison (and others) changed things at the end of the 19th century."The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie" (1968) is a very high quality play written in play form by Jay Presson Allen, based on a book by Muriel Sparks, and was a big stage hit both on Broadway in NYC, and in London in England before it came to the screen in 1968."A Man For All Seasons" (1966) was another play made into a movie which came to movie houses at roughly the same time. Both movies starred gifted stage actors in lead roles, both movies resulted in Best Actor Academy Awards for the main stars."Plays which became movies, and were left mostly untouched" account for some of the very best movies in all movie history."The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie" (1968), which got Maggie Smith a well deserved Best Actress Academy Award, is perhaps the very best play ever filmed with the very best results in terms of technical and artistic movie making.It is a treasure.The subject of "movies based on plays" needs much more study and publicizing than it ever gets.The big money from movies never depended on delivering the quality available in movies like "The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie"(1968).The movie "business" always was (still is, mostly) all about mass taste and appeal to the mostly unwashed, uneducated hordes willing to spend money in return for a light and sound show which they (the hordes) find agreeable, stimulating, and distracting....a brief escape from their hard, unattractive lives, or at least the hard, unattractive parts of their lives.The percentage of truly "high quality" movies like "The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie" (1968) with great writing, great actor and technical movie work, great music, great direction, all blended wonderfully....the percentage of such movies made over history and still available to be got in the marketplace is tiny.....less than 5% of all movies available, and probably less than that....less than 1%.It is important to know about the "best of the best" in movies, just as it is regarding stage plays (e.g. important to know that the plays of Shakespeare are "the best of the best," and have never been equaled, or probably ever will be)."The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie" (1968) is a breathtaking movie based on a great stage play about a brilliant early middle aged female schoolteacher in a private school for girls in Scotland in 1932 who is fired from her job in disgrace, thanks to the head administrator of the school "Miss Brodie" (Maggie Smith) works for, and thanks to help provided Miss Brodie's main enemy, the "Headmistress," by one of Miss Brodie's most "loyal" students and protégés, "Sandy" played by Pamela Franklin (perfectly cast as the ugly duckling intellectual favorite student always described as "reliable," yet never sexually interesting or attractive, even though Franklin appears in almost full frontal nudity poses during a scene with her studio art teacher, "Teddy Lloyd," played wonderfully by Robert Stephens, who is not really aroused by naked "Sandy" and is rebuked in the same scene for thinking only of "Sandy's" teacher, "Jean Brodie," played by Maggie Smith....It's a movie so good, it should be ranked with "Citizen Kane" (1941) in importance for any who care for great movies over history....one of a handful of movies to take away to an island where the best movies of all are gathered to keep exiles company.A "Special Features" commentary by director Ronald Neame (1911 - 2010) and actress Pamela Franklin (1950 - ) was added to the 20th Century Fox "Studio Classics" DVD issue of this movie.The commentary provided by Ronald Neame was produced roughly 40 years after the movie was made, and Mr. Neame was about 85 years old. It is, by far, the very best "add on" commentary to be provided for any video I have ever seen. Mr. Neame is intelligent, complete, and insightful as he guides viewers through the movie and his direction of it. I've never witnessed a better job of "commentary" than this one.Pamela Franklin's contribution in assisting the commentary is also very well done, and notable. She stopped movie and TV actor work after 1981....and discusses what happened in a straightforward and poignant way during her commentary, compares her good treatment in the UK (England) to bad treatment she got in the USA toward the end of her 56 credit list of movie and TV actor jobs.-------------- Written by David "Tex" Allen, SAG Actor.Email Tex Allen at [email protected] Visit WWW.IMDb.Me/TexAllen for movie credits and biography.

This is the film which put Maggie Smith on the map (as far as movies are concerned).Set in Edinburgh between the wars, jean Brodie is a teacher at a girls' school. She is a free thinking free spirit who is in her prime, as she is fond of telling "her girls." And the ideas she offers, and the way in which she offers them, are so seductive that her girls drink them in readily becoming, in the process, not so much free thinkers as good little clones. And we, the audience, gradually come to the understanding that this woman's narcissism is so all-pervading that the flattery of imitation is what she craves rather than the opening of young minds. And, in the end, when it becomes clear what she has done to these girls...This film is gentle but powerful. And although Maggie Smith is mesmerising as this unlikely monster, the ensemble playing is wonderful, with Pamela Franklin a standout as the girl for whom the programming did not work.It has been a long time since I watched this, but I think it is about time for another viewing.

The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie hit an entertainment trifecta so to speak. A successful novel by Mary Spark, a successful Broadway play with a 379 performance run in 1967-69 and finally an Academy Award winning film, you can't do better than that. Not to mention the Tony Award it won on Broadway for Zoe Caldwell. The starring title role is a choice one, it garnered both a Tony and an Oscar for the two different actresses who played it.On screen once you see Maggie Smith play the headstrong teacher Jean Brodie from a girl's school in Scotland in the Thirties you will not forget her. If you've seen the Alfred Hitchcock classic Rope you have some idea what Jean Brodie is all about. In Rope James Stewart plays an iconoclastic teacher who talks about superior beings and later on he sees what kind of influence he's had on impressionable youth at the fancy prep school he teaches at when Farley Granger and John Dall do a thrill killing because they've convinced themselves they're somehow superior.Stewart's students do damage to others, Maggie Smith's charges do damage to themselves. Smith's students drink a little too deeply from her advice about being adventurous women and exploring the world. She's also an admirer of 'superior people' who become leaders and her example is Benito Mussolini in Italy who was legendary for making the trains run on time in his country. She also encourages her students to explore their sexuality, initiate themselves with an affair with an older man, all in the name of becoming worldly and modern females. That does not sit well with principal Celia Johnson who vows to get rid of Smith. In the end Johnson has ample ammunition to do the job. Young Jane Carr as the naive girl who takes Smith all too seriously goes off to Spain to fight in the Civil War there. Carr's brother is already there, but Carr listening to her teacher extol the virtues of that superior leader Franco goes and enlists on his side. She gets herself killed in Spain.But not before Pamela Franklin decides to lose her virginity to art teacher Robert Stephens who Smith was involved with. She also becomes a sadder and wiser girl way too young. But she delivers some really biting lines at both Smith and Stephens, exposing the pretensions both have.One thing that American audiences might not get is a small bit where Smith covers the portrait of Great Britain's Prime Minister at the time, Stanley Baldwin. Baldwin was the Tory Prime Minister in his third ministry at this point and he was first elected with the exciting slogan of Safety First. That could mean many things, but what it was taken by the British public to mean at the time was a calm and quiet leadership, a British version of Calvin Coolidge. Hardly the kind of guy that Jean Brodie would admire like Mussolini or Franco.Jimmy Stewart finds out and realizes just how his philosophy has effected his pupils, but for Miss Jean Brodie she remains absolutely clueless to the end. Nevertheless Maggie Smith's bravura performance of this clueless teacher won her a deserved Oscar.The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie also got an Oscar nomination for Rod McKuen's song Jean in the Best Song category. But the Academy voters gave the award to Burt Bacharach and Hal David for Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head. They were clearly the best songs in 1969's field.Though Maggie Smith got the Oscar a lot of the other performances were also unforgettable. Celia Johnson, Pamela Franklin, Robert Stephens and Gordon Jackson who played another teacher that Smith was involved with are memorable, you will not forget Jane Carr as the touching and naive young girl who dies in Spain trying to impress her idiotic teacher. She should have been nominated herself in the Best Supporting Actress category.Jean, Jean, you will not forget clueless Jean Brodie once you've seen the film.