Goodbye, Mr. Chips

Goodbye, Mr. Chips uses its budget quietly, with good taste, and succeeds in being a big movie without being a gross one. I think I enjoyed it about as much as any road show since Funny Girl.

An overblown version of James Hilton's tearstained little gold mine of a book, with songs where they are not needed (and Leslie Bricusse's songs are never needed), yet there's still charm in the story, and Peter O'Toole gives a romantic performance of great distinction as the schoolmaster whose life is transformed by the Cinderella touch of an actress, played now by Petula Clark.

M-G-M's reproduction of Goodbye, Mr. Chips as a big-budget musical [music and lyrics by Leslie Bricusse] with Peter O'Toole and Petula Clark is a sumptuous near-miss that trips on its own overproduction.

Should it survive—and I suspect it will — it will be largely because of the restrained, affectingly comic performance of Peter O'Toole in the title role. Everything else in this British public-school romance is either out of symmetry or out of date.

Terence Rattigan has jazzed up the screenplay with a laborious melodrama but unfortunately he has not distorted it beyond recognition. That there remain strains of the understated wit of the original dialogue is a dubious blessing--like patches of lace in a sweatsuit. [06 Nov 1969, p.52]

Overall, rookie director Ross stumbles over the material, neither destroying nor enhancing the talents of O'Toole, Clark, and company.

Incredibly bloated remake, with Mrs Chips an ex-showgirl (allowing for some vacuous songs), a continental holiday (allowing for a travelogue wallow), and Herbert Ross (his first film as director), trying to match Wyler's choreographed camera movements on Funny Girl but failing to make them serve any meaningful purpose.