Best movie of this year hands down!

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Character study of egotistically romantic and ultimately dangerous teacher of young girls set in 1930s Scotland. But stage-bound and why is the school interior relentlessly grey? Worth watching for Maggie Smith.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) *** (out of 4)Maggie Smith won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance as Jean Brodie, a teacher in Edinberg whose rather eccentric teaching style sometimes has the wrong impact on the girls in her class. THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE is best remembered today for its Oscar win and there's no question that Smith delivers a fiery performance full of greatness. With that said, I honestly didn't love the film or find it as great as many other have. I thought there were quite a few problems including the pacing, which was just a bit too slow for me. At 116-minutes the slow pacing really made the film drag in spots and I think it could have benefited from running a tad bit shorter. I would also say that I had a hard time connecting with anything that was going on. I thought the film was fascinating because it didn't just show Brodie as a good person or a bad person. Instead it takes a rather honest look and shows her as a good human with flaws. Even with that I still wasn't able to fully get involved with the story as I found it to be going down a rather predictable path. However, the performances here are certainly excellent and reason enough to watch the movie. Smith is simply wonderful as the rather over-the-top teacher who has all sorts of anxieties. I really thought Smith did a marvelous job because this character really is all over the map but the actresses manages to perfectly nail all this weird sides of her. Pamela Franklin plays the supporting part of a woman who feels she's put down by Brodie and this here leads her to an affair with a married teacher. I thought Franklin was just as good as Smith and really liked the way she grew with her character over the course of the film. Both Gordon Jackson and Robert Stephens are also extremely good in their roles.

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.

I can't even put words on this movie. It's too much. If ever there was a film "before it's time" it's this. The level of depravity, insight and emotional power is different from anything else I have seen. It's almost unrateable, but a 10/10 should do.Maggie Smith(who deserved her Oscar!!!!!!!!!!) plays a teacher so obviously deranged but still so human. In fact all the main characters in this film are humans in their purest form: FLAWED, but not directly evil. The characters, no matter how devious do believe to be in the right, and they often are.From the revolutionary fascist snob who considers herself the best example of humanity and has the depravity to try to form the girls in her own image and after her own sickly plans also teaches them individualism and to fight for what they believe. The black hearted, spiteful and utterly conservative Christian principle Miss MacKay(Celia Johnson) do at heart have more or less good intentions, at least in regard to the children. Oh and to make it clear the film is not about the struggle between these characters but rather about life.Beyond any doubt Ronald Neames greatest effort, and this is the director who made The Man Who Never Was. It doesn't even compare in greatness, nor impact. This is just extraordinary. It's a unique power to manage to make such a portrait were nobody are really in the right and despite huge flaws such as fascism, prejudice, adultery, weakness, spitefulness and to some extent even pedophilia they are still likable. This is not only a powerhouse of performances. I need to point out how amazing Pamela Franklin was as well!!!! But also a powerhouse of emotions and uncertainty. In essence, truly human.