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20TH CENTURY STUDIOS

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

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At a glance

Condition
New
Format
DVD
Dimensions
7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6 in; 3.2 oz
Genre
Romance
Language
English, French
Runtime
1 hour and 55 minutes
MPAA rating
PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)

Description

Based on Muriel Spark?s best-selling novel, the film The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie earned a Best Actress Oscar for its star, Maggie Smith, in 1969. The theme song, ?Jean? written by Rod McKuen, was also nominated for a Best Song Academy Award. An inspiration to the young girls she teaches and a challenge to the 1932 Edinburgh school who retains her services, Jean Brodie (Smith) espouses her wisdom on art and music, defends fascism, and otherwise encourages fiercely independent thinking in her students. As she engages in ongoing battles with the school?s rigid heads and bewilders two men in love with her, Miss Brodie also faces the biggest trial of her life when her career and livelihood become threatened.

Specs 14

Genre Romance
Format Anamorphic, Color, Dubbed, Multiple Formats, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Contributor Ann Way, Antoinette Biggerstaff, Antonia Moss, Celia Johnson, Diane Grayson, Diane Robillard, Gillian Evans (II), Gordon Jackson, Heather Seymour, Helen Worth, Helena Gloag, Hilary Berlin, Isla Cameron, Jane Carr (II), Janette Sattler, Jennifer Irvine (II), John Dunbar, Kristin Hatfield, Lavinia Lang, Lesley Paterson (II), Maggie Smith, Margo Cunningham, Molly Weir, Pamela Franklin, Robert Stephens, Rona Anderson, Ronald Neame, Shirley Steedman
Language English, French
Runtime 1 hour and 55 minutes
Aspect Ratio 1.851
MPAA rating PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Product Dimensions 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches; 3.2 ounces

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Top Amazon Reviews

"The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie" (1968) is the best stage play ever to be presented in movie form..a great movie
"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. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on November 9, 2012 by David R. Allen
Pupil Trumps Teacher
As others have noted, "Miss Brodie" is a complex character. To say she's sexually repressed is just the start. In addition, her political idealism is snarled up with her sexual frustrations, so that, on one hand, she appears "liberal" in encouraging her girl pupils to explore the "possibilities" life offers (even if she herself continually retreats from them), but on the other harbors an admiration for arch-conservative (read "fascist") leaders like Mussolini. In reality, of course, her idealism leads her to identify with "Kaiserian" autocrats in her role as educator ---one of the funniest moments in the film, in fact, occurs when she's leading some of her understudies on a school outing, and "Sandy" (played by the beautiful Pamela Franklin) starts swinging her arms in a marching rhythm, deliberately emulating one of Brodie's "fascisti." Yet despite the identification, Miss Brodie is ultimately too timid to play the role of autocrat in any direct way, and so couches her "fascist" tendencies in rhetorical paeans to art and beauty. Meanwhile, the only real artist in Brodie's school also happens to be her disdained paramour (played by Robert Stephens) - another amusing moment occurs when he says to her: "You went to bed with an artist, but were horrified when you woke up with a man." Maggie Smith may have won the Oscar as the title character, but Pamela Franklin happens to be one of my favorite actresses, so I'm biased in my admiration for her in this film. Incredibly cute as "Sandy," she also pulls off a convincing transformation from a rather uncultivated little girl in the first half of the film to a sexually liberated young woman toward the end. Her nude scene in the artist's studio, in fact, is startling considering the film was made in 1968 (see closing credits), and nudity in American commercial films at that time was rare. In fact, she looks so child-like that one can only suppose the studio setting was the only thing that precluded outright censorship. In any case, Ms. Franklin displays a capacity for complexity that rivals Maggie Smith herself, and it seems almost fitting that her character ends up with most of the "freedom" that Brodie can realize only vicariously. The pitched battle she wages with her teacher to attain independence of thought and selfhood is just one of the things that makes this a superior and rewarding film. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on July 16, 2001 by Paul Kesler
Very Unconventional
You only begin to understand what the writer and screenwriter of "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" is trying to say when you realize that the student who ultimately becomes the most like Miss Brodie (Maggie Smith) is Sandy (Pamela Franklin), and that the story is really being told from Sandy's point-of-view. She learns to be as judgmental and irresponsible as her teacher, full of misguided ideals and grievances, and totally confident that the world is as simplistic as she wants it to be. Which is why the film begins with a shot of Miss Brodie on her way to the school and goes out on a shot of Sandy leaving the school, with a Brodie voice-over about her teaching philosophy. Once you understand that the Sandy transformation is the principle dynamic, the rest of the story fits together rather smoothly. The on-going struggle between Miss Brodie and the headmistress is almost a Hitchcock McGuffin, providing a lot of character motivation but ultimately of little importance. Another key is the use of Tennyson's "The Lady of Shalott". "When the Moon was overhead, Came two young lovers lately wed; "I am half sick of shadows," said The Lady of Shalott." In the poem she is a magical being who lives alone on an island upstream from King Arthur's Camelot. Her purpose is to look at the world outside her castle window in a mirror, and to weave what she sees into a tapestry. She is forbidden by the magic to look at the outside world directly. Looking at the world in a mirror and depicting it in a work of art is an allegory for the life of a teacher viewing the world from an ivory tower and interpreting it for her young students. And Miss Brodie's often fearless lifestyle is much like the heroic action taken by Tennyson's lady which leads to her doom. Finally there is the irony of the betrayal by the one student who is the most like her, the only one in whom she really confides. But the film illustrates the disconnect between Miss Brodie and Sandy, who gets her back up that Miss Brodie considers Jenny the ideal. Brodie is too self-absorbed to pick up on Sandy's growing disenchantment just as she does not have the insight to realize that Mary McGregor's brother was fighting against (not for) Franco in Spain. In many ways Miss Brodie is a wonderful teacher and most young girls would have benefited from membership in the Brodie set, mostly because of her encouragement to openly explore the possibilities life offers. She contrasts the word "education", derived from the Latin "educere" (to lead out)-seeing her role as leading out her students' own ideas by encouraging them to think for themselves with the conventional teaching style of "intrusion"- the stuffing of heads with required information. Which adds a lot of complexity to the production and makes it quite unique. One on level it is a rebel teacher fighting the repressive system to give her students a better education. While on another level it is clear that she is going a bit too far and messing up some of her charges. The film covers a five-year period and the 18 year-old Franklin believably manages a transformation from a mousy 12 year-old to a sexually liberated young woman. Her nude scene in the artist's studio shocks the viewer because the passage of time has been handled quite casually and because it is really a reverse striptease, starting nude and slowly putting "on" her clothes. The DVD has a commentary feature by Director Ronald Neame and Pamela Franklin. It too is quite unusual as they were not together in the studio and their voices alternate throughout the film without having any interaction. Neame tends to digress too often to other events in his career but the commentary still manages to provide some useful information. Ultimately this is a depressing but interesting story with Miss Brodie's colorful outfits standing out in the grays and browns that dominate the production design. Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on September 29, 2006 by Only-A-Child
A frustrated spinster......
Towards the end of the movie, as her world started to fall apart, she was told that she was a frustrated spinster. In the movie, Jean Brodie is clearly a frustrated woman, seeking love but rejecting it. She pines for her lost love, Hugh, in WWI action but it is never revealed what there was between them. There are several great performances in this film, set in 1932 in Scotland at a private girls school. Maggie Smith does a tremendous performance as a strong willed and independent minded teacher, determined to do her own way of teaching, regardless. She won an Oscar for it, and it is clear why. Pamela Franklin does a great job as a student who becomes her foil, and some of the ending dialogue is particularly strong as they clash over Jean Brodie's firing. Jean Brodie lived in a world of unreality but couldn't see that. Jean Brodie seemed to either steer her students to perform to their potential, or send them crashing. She kept referring to herself as being in her prime. Commentary by the director, who gives insight into the making of the film, and by Pamela Franklin, who was 19 when the film was released in 1959. The weakness in the extras (and there are only a few extras) are the still shots in the gallery. The shots seemed to be a real mish-mash, without context and some of people not really involved in the film. This is a good DVD to have if you enjoy a strong performance from Maggie Smith and is certainly a classic movie. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on September 29, 2004 by Reader B
charismatic destroyer put down by conqueror she trained
This is a really powerful story of what happens when adults, teachers or any others in authority, cross the line and impose their own damaging influences upon children. Like most people I began this movie seduced by the charismatic Jean Brodie, but as the movie progresses, you see how she is destroying all the lives around her by her ridiculous, convoluted perceptions, seducing them into falling in with her deranged schemes and plans. One teacher who wants only a convential wife and marriage is led into playing a scandalous hidden affair. Brodie throw her students as substitutes for her into the arms of a another teacher, frustrated by a one night stand with Brodie. Not to mention her preaching of questionable politics, values and ethics. The children of her special set are not encouraged to follow their own gifts, but assigned roles by Brodie, and constantly encouraged to live up them. Even more chilling when the first class moves on after three years with her to the middle or senior school, she picks students with the same physical characteristics from the new class and assigns them the same roles and begins to indoctrinate them the same way. Brodie herself constantly plays up her romantic and political ideals. Those students, particularly the most vulnerable, try to act out the roles she assigns to them. One follows a truly physically dangerous path in a war torn country, one who is frustrated by her "dependable" label, strives to emulate brodie by having an affair with the teacher that brodie is trying to encourage another, more beautiful girl to assume. Brodie's influence on all of these children (and some of the adults) is, as one of the girls says, dangerous and unwholesome. Trained in love and war by Brodie, encouraged to be a spy, one girl finally acts to remove the dangerous influence from the school, and is labeled an assassin by Brodie, as well as a conqueror. Sandy then replies that this is what Brodie has always admired, and trained her girls up to emulate and be. The end scene is of Sandy leaving the school, her face set in terrible realization of how, even though she has put a stop to Brodie from doing the same to others in the future (at least at this school) this girl has been shaped, changed and damaged by this woman in ways she will never fully recover from. For any parent, the idea of such a disturbed person having charge of your child for three years (apparently in this school the teacher retains the same class from age 9 through 12 at least) preaching her odd mixture of deception, political nonsense and lust to these kids makes one have some sympathy for the headmistress, who is portrayed as a very narrow minded, unsympathetic character from the start to the end of the movie. To me, the only sympathetic and sane character in the movie is the girl, Sandy. She starts out rather unlikable, and is never terribly likable even at the end. But you end up understanding why she had to do what she did, even though she has been damaged, not just by Brodie's influences, but by the betrayal she had to stage to put a stop to her. A really good, if disturbing film. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on March 27, 2011 by pjf
Disc unrecognized
We finally got around to putting this DVD into a drive to watch it, but it didn't work. It didn't work on a MacBook Pro, it didn't work on Linux, Windows didn't recognize it, and a DVD player attached to our TV just reported "no disc". Sadly the return window closed. Possible to open the window back up? ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on October 15, 2025 by David P. Sinkevitch
Maggie Smith At Her Best
By far my favourite roll of Maggie Smith, she plays Jean Brodie, a teacher at a private all girl's School in Edinburgh Scotland in the 1930's. Having lost the love of her life, Hugh, at Flanders in WWI, she is torn between her love for the art teacher and the music teacher, both of whom represent her lost love Hugh. She dedicates her life to 'my girls', guiding them through her class & continuing to guide them through life, as she sees it and as how she'd like to live it. Jean Brodie is a woman who just doesn't 'get it' & is rapidly coming to the end of her prime. A fine study of lost love, dedication and coming of age, it's in my opinion the finest movie Maggie Smith ever made. Wonderful supporting roles acted by Gordon Jackson, Pamela Franklin & Jane Carr as Mary MacGregor, this is a must see film, and Oliver's beautiful theme song "Jean" only makes a great film better. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on September 21, 2013 by Misty
Gotta Love the Maggie
I love this movie---always have. Maggie is always worth watching, no matter what age. Her acting and mannerisms can't be imitated and like Bette Davis, she's in a category of her own. After rewatching this movie after many years, I realized that "Mona Lisa" with Julia Roberts is very close in storyline to this one and wondered if Hollywood actually just modernized this one. Amazingly similar in all aspects. It's the story of a progressive teacher who tries to enlighten "her girls" with progressive thinking and so gets the hackles up for the staid all-girl's school. Add one nasty girl who in the end gets Miss Brodie fired and you have Mona Lisa all over again. But I love both movies and will watch both over again for the sheer joy of the story. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on September 22, 2017 by Masaka
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