Perfectly adorable

Best movie ever!

In other words,this film is a surreal ride.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Maggie Smith bagged an Oscar as unorthodox teacher in 1930s Edinburgh. She believes she in her prime although she might be getting over the hill and has an unhealthy obsession with strong fascist leaders such as Mussolini and Franco.The film has some location shooting in Edinburgh and captures the strong conservative and church ethos of the school, its inhabitants and for the period. However the film suffers from not being opened up from its stage origins which the the later television series did.Smith plays Brodie as a pompous, delusional spinster playing with the men who are infatuated with her (including her then real life husband Robert Stephens) and equally playing and later manipulating her favourite students.The essence of the film is that as a teacher who wants to encourage free thinking within her girls and seize the opportunities that life has to offer them shows a different face when confronted by one of her students, Sandy played very well by Pamela Franklin who informed on Miss Brodie and hastens her demise due to one of the students fleeing to Spain to fight for Franco and ends up getting killed.The film although well acted by some well know British actors does suffer from being too stage bound.

"The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie" (1968) is the best stage play ever to be presented in movie form..a great movie.The charge that most modern day movies (and possibly all movies throughout history) are air-headed, no-content exercises in providing viewers with a clever light show along with interesting sound of different flavors is true enough.The best stage plays over history made us think, appealed to our mentality and education, and needed good actors to get the play writer's point off the stage and into the audience.Good set decoration and other visuals are nice to have, but not absolutely needed. The Globe Theater in Shakespeare's day had almost no "set decoration" of the type seen in modern times. The "groundlings" (many of whom were well educated and worthy audience members, the noble sort who used to buy "stand up in the back of the theater" 50 cent tickets for Broadway Theater NYC shows 60 years ago) sat on the dirt floor in front of the open air play presented in daylight hours outside before the age of electricity and artificial light, when plays could not be presented lit by candles, the only night-time illumination before Thomas Edison (and others) changed things at the end of the 19th century."The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie" (1968) is a very high quality play written in play form by Jay Presson Allen, based on a book by Muriel Sparks, and was a big stage hit both on Broadway in NYC, and in London in England before it came to the screen in 1968."A Man For All Seasons" (1966) was another play made into a movie which came to movie houses at roughly the same time. Both movies starred gifted stage actors in lead roles, both movies resulted in Best Actor Academy Awards for the main stars."Plays which became movies, and were left mostly untouched" account for some of the very best movies in all movie history."The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie" (1968), which got Maggie Smith a well deserved Best Actress Academy Award, is perhaps the very best play ever filmed with the very best results in terms of technical and artistic movie making.It is a treasure.The subject of "movies based on plays" needs much more study and publicizing than it ever gets.The big money from movies never depended on delivering the quality available in movies like "The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie"(1968).The movie "business" always was (still is, mostly) all about mass taste and appeal to the mostly unwashed, uneducated hordes willing to spend money in return for a light and sound show which they (the hordes) find agreeable, stimulating, and distracting....a brief escape from their hard, unattractive lives, or at least the hard, unattractive parts of their lives.The percentage of truly "high quality" movies like "The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie" (1968) with great writing, great actor and technical movie work, great music, great direction, all blended wonderfully....the percentage of such movies made over history and still available to be got in the marketplace is tiny.....less than 5% of all movies available, and probably less than that....less than 1%.It is important to know about the "best of the best" in movies, just as it is regarding stage plays (e.g. important to know that the plays of Shakespeare are "the best of the best," and have never been equaled, or probably ever will be)."The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie" (1968) is a breathtaking movie based on a great stage play about a brilliant early middle aged female schoolteacher in a private school for girls in Scotland in 1932 who is fired from her job in disgrace, thanks to the head administrator of the school "Miss Brodie" (Maggie Smith) works for, and thanks to help provided Miss Brodie's main enemy, the "Headmistress," by one of Miss Brodie's most "loyal" students and protégés, "Sandy" played by Pamela Franklin (perfectly cast as the ugly duckling intellectual favorite student always described as "reliable," yet never sexually interesting or attractive, even though Franklin appears in almost full frontal nudity poses during a scene with her studio art teacher, "Teddy Lloyd," played wonderfully by Robert Stephens, who is not really aroused by naked "Sandy" and is rebuked in the same scene for thinking only of "Sandy's" teacher, "Jean Brodie," played by Maggie Smith....It's a movie so good, it should be ranked with "Citizen Kane" (1941) in importance for any who care for great movies over history....one of a handful of movies to take away to an island where the best movies of all are gathered to keep exiles company.A "Special Features" commentary by director Ronald Neame (1911 - 2010) and actress Pamela Franklin (1950 - ) was added to the 20th Century Fox "Studio Classics" DVD issue of this movie.The commentary provided by Ronald Neame was produced roughly 40 years after the movie was made, and Mr. Neame was about 85 years old. It is, by far, the very best "add on" commentary to be provided for any video I have ever seen. Mr. Neame is intelligent, complete, and insightful as he guides viewers through the movie and his direction of it. I've never witnessed a better job of "commentary" than this one.Pamela Franklin's contribution in assisting the commentary is also very well done, and notable. She stopped movie and TV actor work after 1981....and discusses what happened in a straightforward and poignant way during her commentary, compares her good treatment in the UK (England) to bad treatment she got in the USA toward the end of her 56 credit list of movie and TV actor jobs.-------------- Written by David "Tex" Allen, SAG Actor.Email Tex Allen at TexAllen@Rocketmail.Com Visit WWW.IMDb.Me/TexAllen for movie credits and biography.

What a great film! I love Maggie Smith, so I wanted to see The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. And I wasn't disappointed. The cinematography and production values are top notch and the script is great. The story is also very charming, the opinions are politically incorrect in a sense but done with such charm and innocence, while the direction is done with consummate ease. The acting is marvellous across the board- Maggie Smith is superb and thoroughly deserved her Oscar, but I also feel Celia Johnson was overlooked, for she was every bit as good as the disapproving headmistress. Robert Stephens, Gordon Jackson and Pamela Franklin are also very impressive. Overall, it is a truly great film, and certainly one of Smith's best. 10/10 Bethany Cox

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.