Goodbye, Mr. Chips

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Movie
German title Goodbye, Mr. Chips
Original title Goodbye, Mr. Chips
Country of production Great Britain
original language English
Publishing year 1939
length 110 minutes
Rod
Director Sam Wood
script Claudine West ,
Eric Maschwitz ,
RC Sherriff
production Victor Saville
music Richard Addinsell
camera Freddie Young
cut Charles Frend
occupation

Auf Wiedersehen, Mr. Chips (Original title: Goodbye, Mr. Chips ) is a British drama for the US production company MGM from 1939. The novel Farewell, Mister Chips! ( Goodbye, Mr. Chips , 1934) by James Hilton . The title role gave Robert Donat the Oscar .

action

Charles Chipping, an 83-year-old school teacher, has caught a cold and, on the advice of his doctor, is said to be in bed. In his armchair he falls asleep and dreams of his teaching career:

In 1870 he began teaching as a shy young Latin teacher in Brookfield, a traditional English school for boys. Since he cannot assert himself as an authority in his classes at first, but is still determined to stay in Brookfield, he teaches with discipline- demanding rigor from now on . As a result, he is respected, but is unpopular with both his students and his colleagues. Over the years, Chipping has longed to be liked by his students. However, he is unable to shed his usual reserve and severity. At the same time, he dreams of one day becoming the headmaster of the school. But his unpopularity also stands in the way of his promotion.

One day his only friend, the German teacher Max Staefel, invites him to spend the summer vacation together in Austria . On a hike through the foggy mountains of the Alps , Chipping met the young Englishwoman Katherine Ellis. Both are immediately taken with each other, but Chipping is too shy to take the first step that they lose sight of each other again in the following days. When they meet again in Vienna , their feelings for one another deepen. At a ball, Katherine succeeds in luring her introverted admirer more and more out of his snail shell and to get him to ask her to dance. When Katherine and her friend Flora are on their way home by train, she spontaneously kisses Chipping on the mouth when she says goodbye, whereupon the latter proposes to her.

Back in England, the students and the other teachers can hardly believe that Chipping got married. They are particularly surprised to discover how beautiful and charming his wife Katherine is, who affectionately calls her husband "Chips". Due to her caring and cheerful nature, Chipping manages to show his own friendliness towards his students and colleagues, so that his level of popularity increases steadily. But his personal happiness only lasts for a short time. When Katherine is expecting a child, she dies with the baby in childbirth. Although Chipping is devastated by this, he continues his new intercourse with others in memory of Katherine.

Years go by and Mr. Chips, who he is now known and appreciated as, teaches the sons and grandchildren of his old students with great humor and indulgence. When one day a new principal wants to modernize the school and let Chips retire, students and parents insist that Chips can stay. When he finally retires, he keeps in touch with his students while he lives in a small cottage near the school. However, the beginning of the First World War in 1914 led him to return to work as a Latin teacher when numerous teachers signed up for military service. During the war years, his long-cherished dream finally became a reality when he was appointed principal of the school. His new position also means he has to take on a sad task of having to reveal the names of colleagues and former students who died in the war. He also reads out the name of his friend Staefel, even though he fought on the enemy side in a Saxon regiment .

Back in the present, Chips lies weak in his bed. A few friends and colleagues are by his side in the last hour of his life. One of them regrets Chips because he had no children. Chips replied, “I thought I heard you say it was a shame I didn't have children. But you are wrong. I had some ... thousands of children ... many thousands ... and all boys. "

background

Book template

British writer James Hilton wrote the story Goodbye to Mr. Chips within two weeks of November 1933 for the Christmas edition of the British Weekly . Hilton was inspired by his own father, who was a British teacher, and a number of teachers who had taught him at Leys School in Cambridge as inspiration for the title character . Although the story was not initially very successful in England , it was published as Goodbye, Mr. Chips by The Atlantic Monthly newspaper in April 1934 in the United States , where it was enthusiastically received by American readers.

After Goodbye, Mr. Chips was also published as a short novel two months later, English critics re-examined Hilton's work and declared it a masterpiece. The novel was first published in German in 1936 under the title Farewell, old chips! by Herbert Reichner Verlag .

Pre-production

MGM acquired the film rights on the advice of production manager Irving Thalberg , who then invited Hilton to Hollywood to write a suitable screenplay with Claudine West , Eric Maschwitz and R. C. Sherriff . But when Thalberg suddenly died in 1936, the film adaptation of Goodbye, Mr. Chips was put on hold for the time being. It was producer Sidney Franklin , after all , who got production going again in 1938 and hired Hollywood veteran Sam Wood to direct. Due to other projects Franklin left the role of producer to the British Victor Saville . Saville was determined to cast British actor Robert Donat as Mr. Chips.

For the role of Katherine, Saville initially saw the English actress Elizabeth Allan . However, after this had lost her role in the film The Citadel (1938) to Rosalind Russell , she sued MGM and forfeited her contract with the studio, so that she was no longer eligible as Katherine. Then they thought about another English actress who had been discovered by studio boss Louis B. Mayer in London in 1937 and immediately taken under contract, but had not yet appeared in any Hollywood film. When Greer Garson received the news that she was being offered the role of Katherine, she was initially unwilling to accept it. The figure of Mrs. Chips seemed too small and insignificant to her. However, since she had no other role in mind, she finally accepted the offer. The rest of the cast was assembled on location in England, where MGM had a UK branch called Denham Film Studios.

Filming

Repton School in Derbyshire

In the summer of 1938, the first outdoor shots were filmed at the Repton School in Repton , Derbyshire , England , where the writer Roald Dahl , the actor Basil Rathbone and Eric Maschwitz , one of the screenwriters of Mr. Chips , once went to school. On site in the film studios in Denham, among others, 300 students from the Repton School played as extras during their school holidays. The images of the mist-shrouded mountains of the Alps were shot in Switzerland and later projected onto a screen in Denham Studios as a backdrop for the actors.

Official filming began on November 28, 1938. Greer Garson initially struggled to find her way around the set due to her lack of experience in front of the film camera. Her film partner Robert Donat, who had been making films since 1932 and was very familiar with camera technology, was always on hand to help. “[Robert] was a good-hearted man. Although I only met him when we were filming together, I only have the fondest memories of someone special with a unique talent, ”Garson said later.

Remarks

  • Goodbye, Mr. Chips was the last film MGM made in the UK before the start of World War II .
  • With the exception of director Sam Wood, actor Paul Henreid and some German-speaking supporting actors in the Austrian scenes, all those involved were of British origin.
  • “Brookfield”, the name of the school in the film and in the literary source by Hilton, is fictional.
  • The opening credits of the film end with a dedication to Irving Thalberg , who originally started the production of the film, but who died of pneumonia in 1936 at the age of only 37.
  • The then 34-year-old Robert Donat aged 63 years in the film with the help of make-up and mustache.
  • In the big ball scene in Vienna , Donat and Garson dance to Johann Strauss ' famous waltz On the Beautiful Blue Danube (1867). The composition becomes the leitmotif in the film , which henceforth reflects Chipping's love for Katherine.

reception

publication

Goodbye, Mr. Chips celebrated its world premiere on May 15, 1939 at the Astor Theater on New York's Broadway . Competition at the US box office was particularly fierce this year. Films like Gone with the Wind , The Magical Land or Mr. Smith Goes to Washington were box office magnets and are now considered classic films . Although the story of an unpopular teacher who turns into a model educator through love didn't seem to promise much success, goodbye, Mr. Chips , like the book by James Hilton, was very popular with the audience. With a production cost of $ 1,051,000 and a box office of $ 3,252,000, the drama made a substantial profit, making it one of the most successful films of the year.

The critics were also impressed and praised both Robert Donat's performance and Greer Garson's debut. While the film cemented Donat's reputation as a versatile and sensitive actor, it made Garson a film star overnight, which is why she subsequently received numerous new role offers. “I totally underestimated the impact [the role of] Mrs. Chips would have on my career. I'm glad I was wrong here once, ”said Garson years later

In 1969, the American director Herbert Ross shot a remake in the form of a film musical with Peter O'Toole and Petula Clark in the leading roles. The story of the teacher Mr. Chips also inspired films such as Dead Poets Club (1989) with Robin Williams and Mr. Holland's Opus (1995) with Richard Dreyfuss . In a 1999 British Film Institute poll , Goodbye, Mr. Chips ranked 72nd on the list of the best British films of the 20th century. The New York Times named the film to the list of the 1,000 best films of all time in 2004.

The film never came into cinemas in Germany. The German first release took place as a television broadcast on September 29, 1998 on ARD with a first German dubbed version created for it . In this, Wolfgang Draeger spoke the role of Mr. Chip. In 2004 the film was released on DVD.

Reviews

For the lexicon of international films , goodbye, Mr. Chips was “[e] in a teacher drama with a brilliant script and refreshing direction, which nevertheless impresses above all with the engaging lead actor”. Cinema simply meant: "Moving classic."

For Frank S. Nugent of the New York Times, it was "a calm, heartwarming, and generally satisfactory film adaptation of a sentimental short novel". The film is "worth seeing", especially thanks to the portrayal of Robert Donat with his "incredibly good character drawing". Greer Garson's Katherine is "completely believable and downright adorable" and "one of the nicest people you would ever hope to meet anywhere". In view of her death, it is more than regrettable that the film continues without her.

Richard Gilliam of the All Movie Guide called goodbye, Mr. Chips looking back, "another classic from 1939". The film seems “fresh and intelligent [...] in every respect” and avoids “sentimentality that often brings this kind of film to a standstill”. Although his two remakes could show "considerable qualities", the original remains "the best version". However, it may be "too old-fashioned to please today's viewers".

Awards

Although her role was on the small side, Greer Garson instantly received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress for her debut . In the Best Supporting Actress category , she probably would have had more chances of winning the trophy, as there was no question that Vivien Leigh would win the award for her leading role as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind at the 1940 Academy Awards .

Goodbye, Mr. Chips received six more Oscar nominations in the categories of Best Picture , Best Director , Best Adapted Screenplay , Best Editing , Best Sound ( AW Watkins ) and Best Actor , but only Robert Donat was able to prevail in the actor category and beat three of the most famous male roles in film history: Clark Gables Rhett Butler in Gone With The Wind , James Stewart's Jefferson Smith in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Laurence Olivier's Heathcliff at Storm Heights . To this day, Mr. Chips is considered Donat's most famous and popular role.

literature

  • James Hilton : Goodbye Mister Chips! . 3. Edition. Wilhelm Heyne Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1981, ISBN 3-453-00935-5 , 108 pp.
  • James Hilton: Good-bye, Mr. Chips . Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2004, ISBN 0-316-01013-8 , 144 pp. (English)

Further film adaptations of the novel

  • 1969: Goodbye, Mr. Chips - USA - Feature film with Peter O'Toole and Petula Clark
  • 1984: Goodbye Mr. Chips - UK - six-part television adaptation by the BBC
  • 2002: Goodbye, Mr. Chips - UK - TV movie

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Michael Troyan: A Rose for Mrs. Miniver. The Life of Greer Garson . The University Press of Kentucky, 1999, pp. 88-90.
  2. ↑ Cinema: The New Pictures: May 22, 1939 . In: Time , May 22, 1939.
  3. ^ Roy Moseley: Evergreen: Victor Saville in His Own Words . Southern Illinois University Press, 1st Edition, 2000, p. 127.
  4. ↑ “Bob was the dearest man. Although I knew him only while we were working together, I have the happiest memories of a very special human being with an exceptional talent. " Greer Garson cited. after Michael Troyan: A Rose for Mrs. Miniver. The Life of Greer Garson . The University Press of Kentucky, 1999, p. 92.
  5. ^ Bernard Waites, Tony Bennett, Graham Martin: Popular Culture: Past and Present: A Reader . The Open University, 1982, p. 155.
  6. ↑ Michael Troyan: A Rose for Mrs. Miniver. The Life of Greer Garson . The University Press of Kentucky, 1999, p. 95.
  7. ↑ "I underestimated completely Call Mrs. chip's influence on my career. For once, I am glad I was wrong. " Greer Garson cited. after Michael Troyan: A Rose for Mrs. Miniver. The Life of Greer Garson . The University Press of Kentucky, 1999, p. 94.
  8. ↑ cf. omovie.com
  9. ↑ cf. bfi.org.uk ( Memento from June 23, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) ( British Film Institute )
  10. ↑ The Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made ( Memento January 2, 2016 in the Internet Archive ). In: The New York Times .
  11. ↑ Goodbye, Mr. Chips. In: synchronkartei.de. German synchronous file , accessed on April 14, 2019 .
  12. ↑ Goodbye, Mr. Chips. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed April 14, 2019 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  13. ↑ cf. cinema.de
  14. ↑ “It is a serene, heartwarming and generally satisfactory film edition of an edifyingly sentimental novelette. […] Mr. Chips is worth its time. Particularly is he worth it with Mr. Donat's portrait of him. It is an incredibly fine characterization […]. Miss Garson's Katherine […] is altogether believable and quite entrancing. [...] Her Katherine is one of the nicest people we would hope to meet anywhere. When she dies, we hate to have the picture continue without her. " Frank S. Nugent : Metro's London-Made Version of 'Goodbye, Mr. Chips' Has Its Premiere at the Astor Theater At the Fifth Avenue Playhouse . In: The New York Times , May 16, 1939.
  15. ↑ “ Goodbye, Mr. Chips is another classic from 1939 […]. A crisp and intelligent film in all aspects, it avoids the maudlin sentimentality that often hinders films of this sort. [...] While its two remakes have substantial merit, the original version remains the best. It may, however, be too old-fashioned to appeal to some of today's moviegoers. " Richard Gilliam, cf. omovie.com