RRP £10.99 Lowest New Price £20.00

Parental Guidance MGM Entertainment Release date: Monday 4th of November 1991 Starring: Robert Donat, John Mills, Greer Garson, Paul Henreid, Terry Kilburn, Director(s): Format: PAL, Number of discs: 1 Running time: 148 minutes Language: English (Original Language)

RRP: £10.99
Editorial
Amazon.co.uk Review

One more terrific film from a terrific year for movies--1939, the year of Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz and Stagecoach, among others--Sam Wood's Goodbye Mr Chips is a deeply stirring work starring Robert Donat as the old schoolmaster who looks back upon his life. Told mostly in flashbacks, the film wraps itself around a history of an older England as seen through the generations of boys who pass through Mr Chips's classroom. Greer Garson is her usual classy, sexy-intelligent self as Donat's wife, their earlier courtship one of the film's highlights. Get a box of tissues at the ready, for this one. --Tom Keogh

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Editorial
Amazon.co.uk Review

The first film adaptation of James Hilton's British school saga, Goodbye Mr Chips is a genuine Hollywood classic. Despite competition from Gone with the Wind, The Four Feathers and The Wizard of Oz (all 1939) the film won a Best Actor Oscar for Robert Donat and six further major nominations. Donat, who had previously starred in Hilton adaptation Knight Without Armour (1937), is superb as a beloved public-school Latin teacher in an episodic tale spanning 1870-1933. From initially incompetent young teacher, he meets his wife (well played by Greer Garson) during an extended idyll in Austria, only to endure the horror of former pupils becoming victims of the Great War.

Though studio-bound and sentimental by current standards, Goodbye Mr Chips contains great warmth and humanity, and is eventually extremely moving. There is an excellent score by Richard Addinsell, and the evocation of the tragedy of 1914-18, together with Chips' friendship with German teacher Staefel (Paul Henreid), must have struck a truly resonant note in 1939. James Hilton had previously been responsible for Lost Horizon (1937), and oddly both that film and Chips would be remade as musicals, in 1973 and 1969 respectively. Chips would again emerge as a BBC serial (1984) and a 2002 TV movie starring Martin Clunes; but for many this original screen version will always remain the best.

On the DVD: Goodbye Mr Chips is presented on a basic disc with the only extras being an alternative French soundtrack and various subtitle options, including English for hard of hearing. The mono sound is fairly good, though there is occasional distortion on the music. The b/w picture is transferred in the original Academy ratio but the print used shows frequent, though minor, damage. --Gary S Dalkin

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Cashing-in your chips
Review date: 2009-05-05 Rating: 10 out of 10

Not being a lover of films from this era, I watched this with some A level Media students I was teaching British film to. I have to say that it's an absolute masterpiece; Donat is awesome as the initially weak but gradually more effective school master, who ends his days as headmaster and a legend amonst boys young and old. The film has real pathos and deserved its Oscar; I saw a dozen hardened 17 year olds be genuinely moved by this film, and that is a testament in itself.

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