BRILLIANT ‘GOOD-BYE, MR CHIPS ’

Evening Star, Issue 23444, 8 December 1939, Page 3

BRILLIANT ‘GOOD-BYE, MR CHIPS ’

ENGLISH FILM MASTERPIECE The rapid rise to front-rank prominence of the English film-producing studios has been caused by the many excellent films which have emanated from that country in the past two or three years. Surely one of the finest of these films, and indeed, a film which must find a place in the cinematographic masterpieces of all time, is ‘ Goodbye, Mr Chips,’ Victor Saville’s masterly adaptation of James Hilton’s novel, which was given a preview screening at the Regent yesterday. Magnificently balanced and directed by Sam Wood, with an unusually sensitive appreciation of its varying moods, this simply-told story of an English schoolmaster, showing his life from the time he enters Brookfield School until he dies there many years after, is drama at its very finest. Mr Chips goes to Brookfield as a young master and finally becomes the school’s most cherished ‘tradition At the commencement he has a trying time, but he masters his difficulties, his shyness, and his sense of frustration. Accepted with amused but . kindly toleration by his intimates, the news that “Old Chipping” has brought back a wife with him after a holiday in the Tyro] staggers them. But her unexpected beauty captivates them, and henceforth the hitherto lonely Chipping finds happiness, confidence and n quiet sense of humour. Then his wife dies with her babe in child-birth. Mr Chips walks dazedly to his classroom and quietly asks the boys to turn to their accustomed , books. Amidst the hilarity of an April Fool’s Day joke which the boys have played on Mr Chips, all unwitting of the tragedy which has come into his life, another boy enters and whispers the news about. Tremulously they commence their Latin lesson—it

sounds simple; but it is all handled with such deftness and sincerity that it* makes one of the most-striking of th» poignant scenes which bring tragio notes into a narrative which flows as gently to its. end as a. placid, English stream The school setting is so- excellent that one becomes submerged in, its atmosphere just as one becomes one of .Mr Chips’s pupils, as one. .follow* his- career and learns the. true significance of toleration, dignity, gentleness, and restraint All that need be said of Robert .Donat’s “ Mr Chips ” is that .no character has ever held an audience so enraptured. Although one must get used to it, Donat’s make-up as the octogenarian is astonishingly realistic, as is the portrait of the middle-aged Chips. Greer Garson makes a magnificent debut with her part of Mr Chips’* loved wife. Every character in this impressive picture has been perfectly cast, even down to the smallest schoolboy. When the lovable old schoolmaster dies, the audisnce can but feel it has lost % lifelong friend