Salutations™!!
Last night I was trying to get everything done so I will admit that my post was a bit on the short side. But, I forgot to mention that the film I was watching was The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969). It stars Maggie Smith, her real-life husband Robert Stephens, Pamela Franklin and others. I would say that this movie would never get made today. It couldn’t and I’m surprised it was then.
Maggie Smith is young in this. It was 50 years ago, right? That means she was around 35 or so. But, she sounds exactly the same as Professor McGonagall does now. She plays the titular character who is a headstrong young teacher in a private school in 1930s Edinburgh (that) ignores the curriculum and influences her impressionable 12-year-old charges with her over-romanticized world view. (per IMDb). She bypasses teaching the kids and instead instills in them her love of art, literature and it seems sexuality.
She’s in an affair with not only a married man, Teddy Lloyd (Stephens), but a choir teacher (Gordon Jackson) and it alludes that there are probably a few more that she’s “rolling in the hay” with. Her students are blinded by her romantic worldviews and some fall for it, including some that run off to fight in wars because she says they should, posing for the married man (who happens to be an artist) and others.
The part that really struck me was when Sandy (Franklin), a late teen and former student of Miss Brodie’s gets romantically involved with the married painter. That and the overt talk about “sexual intercourse.”
There’s a little more to it but there was some nudity (the film was rated M for Mature, but IMDb has it as PG). But it was just odd that the film was the way it was. I could be wrong as Lolita has been made and remade several times, but the whole teacher/student thing just usually doesn’t fly. I don’t have a problem with it, but I can see where it would definitely take some people to extreme nervousness.
Have you seen it? What did you think of it? I think overall it was a good movie, I just am surprised at it.
Until tomorrow, same blog channel…
Scorp out!
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“There’s no contradiction in being both ridiculous and magnificent.” – Teddy Lloyd