Silent movies - Teddy at the Throttle

I know that this isn't a Halloween movie, but I had to make a last minute change. At least we have a villain!

You may know Gloria Swanson not so much as the silent movie star she used to be, but from the movie "Sunset Boulevard" in which she plays a former silent movie star.
Anyway, today I'll be talking about "Teddy at the Throttle" from 1917.

First the plot (with spoilers).

Gloria Dawn, her trusted four-legged friend Teddy, and her sweetheart Bobbie Knight live in the same building.
As does evil Henry Black. He's Gloria's guardian and Bobbie's estate manager (until he's married) diverting money to his own account. He wants his sister to marry Bobbie to hide that which would suit Bobbie's aunt who doesn't approve of Gloria but thinks Black's sister will help her climb the social ladder.

And Bobbie indeed falls for her immediately - he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer - despite just having given Gloria a ring.
Although Gloria reminds him of that, Bobbie can't resist "his new girl" and starts neglecting her, yes, he even tells Gloria to give the ring back when the sister demands it. 

Then Black is informed by Bobbie's lawyer that a new will has turned up saying that Bobbie only gets the money if he marries Gloria. If he doesn't, the money will go to Gloria.
Black is delighted to see Bobbie and his sister together and decides to marry Gloria himself to get to the money.

There's only one problem. Gloria doesn't want him.
At a ball, however, Bobbie leaves his love on the dance floor (after a hilarious dance) because he just can't stay away from Gloria.

Not allowing the plan to go wrong, the Blacks quickly separate the lovebirds again, but Gloria finds out about the new will and calls the lawyer for help. 
Meanwhile, despite a huge storm, Ms. Black and Bobbie elope by car, followed by Gloria who's followed by Mr. Black. As the car is stuck in the mud, Gloria manages to catch up with them and she shows Bobbie the letter. Of course, he changes his mind once again, but Gloria has enough and tells him to marry the sister.

Unfortunately, Black catches her, and to save himself from prison he chains her to the tracks to be run over by the train in which the lawyer is sitting (which they of course don't know).
Again, this is a comedy and if you want to read more about one of the most prevalent ideas about silent movies - the villain tying a damsel to railroad tracks - I have three posts for you on that trope in the sources below.
Gloria can't escape by herself and whistles for the true hero of this film - Teddy!

That must be some powerful dog whistle.

When Teddy arrives, Gloria gives him a note to take to Bobbie.
Both come to her rescue, but the chains are too strong.

Teddy leaps into the train with the note and the engineers stop the train, but not in time. Bobbie jumps out of the way, but Gloria is right under the train which snaps the chains under its wheels.

Gloria Swanson insisted on doing this dangerous stunt
of disappearing into a hole just in time herself!

Bobbie pulls Gloria out from under the train.
Black tries to escape when he sees that his plan has failed, but once again we can trust Teddy to do the right thing.

Black gets arrested and Gloria and Bobbie get their happy ending!

Ok, ok, I'll admit it. Of course, I chose this film mainly for Teddy.
That doesn't mean it's not interesting in other ways, even dark if you know the background of some scenes.
First, we have a spoof of the damsel on the tracks. Like the idea that there was nothing subtle about silent movies - keyword "overacting" - many of us probably have that trope in our heads. I really enjoyed reading the posts below telling me more about it.
Second, not unusual for early silent movies there are some rough scenes, but the ones with Swanson and Wallace Beery as Mr. Black are not all play. They were married at the time, but Beery had been abusive, so the marriage had already fallen apart. It makes watching those scenes harder knowing Swanson's fear and Beery's abuse are in fact real.

Nevertheless, this is a charming comedy and not as chaotic as the plot might suggest. My favorite bit is the over the top dance scene.
Honestly, I'm not sure if I would still want "fickle-hearted" Bobbie in the end, but he might grow up under Gloria's strong hand - she really knows what she wants and what not!

Now let's get to the really important stuff.
Teddy the Dog or Keystone Teddy (after Mack Sennett's "Keystone Film Company") was a 42” tall, 145-pound Great Dane who was in at least 60 movies, mostly shorts, from 1916 to 1924. He died in 1925 at the age of 14.
Wasn't he gorgeous?

Public domain via Wikipedia

Sources and further reading:

Article on Teddy:

Larry Harnisch: Mary Mallory / Hollywood Heights: Teddy the Dog, Mack Sennett's Best Friend. On: The Daily Mirror, July 6, 2015


Articles on the "Damsel tied to the tracks trope":

1. Fritzi Kramer: Teddy at the Throttle (1917) - A Silent Film Review. On: Movies Silently, December 12, 2021
2. Fritzi Kramer: Silent Movie Myth: Tied to the Railroad Tracks. On: Movies Silently, March 12, 2013
3. Lea Stans: The “Damsel Tied To The Railroad Tracks” Trope Revisited. On: Silent-ology, September 29, 2026

From my children's book cabinet - Die Kinder, die Hexen zaubern konnten

I was a little shocked to see how long ago it was that I last reached into my children's book cabinet.
It was very last minute that I suddenly thought Halloween ... witches ... children's book ... ooooh, Eleanor Estes! ... re-read the book and threw this post together in one night (therefore the pictures in the shine of my reading lamp which might be happening more than once in the future).

My book today is "Die Kinder, die Hexen zaubern konnten", later published as "Die Hexenfamilie", the literal translation of the original title "The Witch Family" (spoilers ahead as usual).

Gundel approves of a book with witches
AND their three black cats! She gives it 
five out of five headbonks.

One day, Old Witch, the head witch of all the witches, was banished. Amy, just an ordinary real girl, not a witch, said Old Witch would have to go away. So Old Witch had to go.

Amy and her best friend Clarissa, both almost seven years of age, live on Garden Lane in Washington, D.C.
They love to hear stories of Old Witch that Amy's mother is telling them, and they love to draw. So one day in February, they draw pictures of Old Witch, and Amy decides to "banquish" her (she likes to make up words or sometimes still has a problem with more difficult ones) to the bare glass hill because she's so mean and because little bunnies are her favorite food.

Then the girls remember that Halloween would be very boring without Old Witch, so she's allowed to come down on that one day, but only if she has been good for a whole year.
Amy explains to Clarissa that it's important to put things in writing. Luckily, she likes to write letters which a red cardinal takes to their recipients.

"You must be good. You must not be bad. You must go and live on the glass hill always. But if you will be good, you can come back on Halloween night. So, please be good!"

That's really hard for Old Witch who's head witch after all and a very good one, but not by Amy's definition of good (a problem that Otfried Preußler's "The Little Witch" from 1957 is facing as well - what is good?).
Amy also has an emissary on the glass hill, Malachi (which means messenger) the magical spelling bee who plays an important role throughout. Old Witch can't see him but feel his stings, only her cat Tom knows where he's hiding.
As a reward for being good, Amy eventually allows Old Witch to say an Abracadabra which brings her Little Witch Girl Hannah with her cat Little Tommy for company.
Hannah goes to witch school and on her birthday she's having a party with her classmates ... and Amy and Clarissa!
And after giving Hannah a best friend, a mermaid with a baby sister, Amy finally also fulfills the girl's wish for a baby sister of her own, tiny kitten included.

This has always been my favorite picture in the book.

The border between the worlds begins to blur more and more.
One day, the girls draw rabbits painting eggs on their meadow and Old Witch can see that scene for real through her telescope.
Despite knowing the consequences, she swoops down on the rabbits and eats them and their eggs, at least that's what she thinks. Malachi has warned the rabbits who have been prepared for such a situation and put out toy rabbits and painted rocks which give Old Witch an upset stomach.
Amy, however, is generous because none of the real rabbits have come to harm and still allows her to come down for Halloween.

On Halloween, not only Old Witch is coming down, though. Hannah askdevoursr mermaid friend to babysit her little sister, so she can participate as well and fly to Garden Lane to see Amy and Clarissa. She meets Amy who wears a witch costume and they swap places, but Hannah uses the wrong spell for the broom which flies Amy back to the glass hill. Just in time, Hannah manages to give Amy a note with a spell for Malachi.
On the glass hill, Amy notices for the first time how cold and bare it is and that it can't be very nice for the witches having to live there.

After having to spend a whole night on the hill and a morning at the witch school, the little witches find out that she's the one who banished Old Witch. They threaten to turn her into a rabbit to give to the head witch, but Malachi saves her with his magical powers and takes her home. For Hannah, who has been waiting for her at Garden Lane, only two minutes have gone by.

The next day, Amy and Clarissa are drawing again.
Hannah gets a letter from Amy telling her to look around and she sees grass and flowers coming up everywhere, the house turns white, and there's even a lake, so the mermaids can visit them!

Even Old Witch likes how pretty everything looks now.
Clarissa is surprised about the decision, but says that Old Witch was "good ever after" now, right? Amy can't believe it.

"Wicked Old Mean Old Witch? Good ever after? Clarissa, are you a nope[sic]?? Of course, she wasn’t. She was still awful sometimes. The rest of the time she was good. Only when she was awful she was not good. Clarissa, listen to me. She IS Old Witch, isn’t she? What is the good of Old Witch if she is good all the time?"

Then she asks her mother to tell them about Old Witch again ... the story goes on.

Estes's book is from 1960 and the first German translation from 1971 which means the book was actually still quite new when I got it first from the library as a child. And then again. And again. I read it a lot and think the illustrations by Edward Ardizzone are just perfect.
I love this book so much and would still be able to show you the exact spot where it stood on the shelf, if the old library still existed, that is.

When I wrote this post, I only had the German translation and therefore looked for reviews that would help me with original names or words - there's a lot of wordplay (which is why I also ordered the original now) - and found an academic article (see below).
It describes the book as "an innovative work of metafiction, which explicitly engages with a number of philosophical and literary-critical issues central to postmodern and poststructuralist discussion".
I would lie if I claimed I understood all of it (the professor is an expert in the field) or even read all of it with full concentration, but there were some interesting points.
I couldn't help wondering what authors think about articles like this one? Was all of that "innovation" planned through or was it practice or did it just happen or maybe a bit of everything?

Of course, not everyone thinks the book is so great (as always). Some people find it repetitive or too old-fashioned, the characters flat or Malachi annoying with his spelling (which I kind of get in case of audiobooks or people reading it to children, but as a reader I always just ignore that and don't spell out in my head what he says), Amy too overpowering and Clarissa too reserved.
You know something, though? These kids are six. Some children have a lot of fantasy and others not as much. Sometimes one child is the leader and others run along. I have experienced that myself, both as follower and leader depending on the story. It doesn't mean Amy is automatically a bully and it doesn't mean that Clarissa will never have anything to say (which is hinted at in the ending, by the way, when Amy  accepts one of Clarissa's ideas).

Maybe you sometimes have to give your inner child the chance to read along with the grown up you to retain the magic? What were you like as a child?
Back then, I just went along with those two worlds opening up to each other without even wondering if all of this was just Amy's imagination and what she learned from the story. I probably wanted it to be possible (just like the talking Kasperle).
I may have mentioned before that I told myself made up stories when walking somewhere. Imagine those had come true! I'm not sure I could have handled the responsibility.

Anyhow, the book's magic still works for me today.
Do you have a favorite witch book of your own?


Source and further reading:

Dawn Heinecken: The Reality of Fiction and the Ethics of Storytelling in Eleanor Estes’s The Witch Family. In: Children’s Literature in Education 41, 2010, 3, pp. 260–272
DOI 10.1007/s10583-010-9108-x (closed access)

Goodbye, Mr. Chips - Part 2, The novella and the 2002 and 1984 adaptations

A few days ago, I wrote about one of my favorite movies here, "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" from 1939.
Today, I want to talk about the novella by James Hilton that the movie is based on, but also about a TV film and a TV serial.
I will keep the plot rather short here as it's already in the other post and concentrate on the big differences instead.

"Good-bye, Mr. Chips" is the story of Mr. Chipping, master at Brookfield, a British public school for boys. He begins teaching in 1870 at the age of 22 and stays near the school even after his retirement until his death in 1933.
Despite a short marriage - his wife and their child die during birth - his life is dedicated to the school and the pupils and even in retirement, during the First World War, he substitutes for the headmaster.

According to Hilton, he wrote the novella within one week in 1933 as he had to meet a deadline for a story to appear in the Christmas issue of the "British Weekly". In 1934, it appeared in the "Atlantic" where it was so successful that it was published as a book first in the USA and then in England.
In 1938, the sequel "To You Mr. Chips" was published which had some more Chips stories and an autobiographical chapter about Hilton's own school days.

The 1939 movie pretty much follows the plot of the novella. There are a few small changes, the train ride with the pupils at the beginning, some names, or that Chips takes over for the headmaster not because he joins up, but because he's severely ill.
The biggest change, however, is the love story. The movie concentrates more on how Chips and Kathy Ellis meet and fall in love while the novella emphasizes the influence Kathie Bridges has on Chips and the school.

In the movie, Chips thinks he has to rescue Kathy from the mountain, and while caught in the mist, she surprises him with her progressive ideas. He then loses her because she continues her bike ride with a friend, but they meet again in Vienna and go to a ball. It's all rather head over heel and very romantic.
In the novella, Kathie stands on a ledge, and after Chips sprains his ankle thinking he has to help her, she and her friend have to help him down the mountain instead. Kathie pays him visits while he's laid up, and at first he's not at all sure about this "new woman" with her radical positions like university access for women - and the vote! They talk a lot and get married at the end of the holidays.

She brings these radical positions to the school with her. Once she proposes a football (soccer for Americans) match with boys from the mission in East London run by Brookfield which becomes a surprising (for everyone but Kathie) success. Sometimes she persuades Chips to let boys off for more or less serious offences or talk to them first to find out the reasons which doesn't mean she excuses all of them, though.
Another difference is that the movie builds up the scene to Kathy's death - the doctor saying they will do their best etc. - while it's a very short chapter in the book, and yet both manage in their own way to describe Chips's loss poignantly.

We are talking Hollywood movie, and therefore the way the love story was told isn't surprising to me and I also didn't mind it, but I feel the novella gives Kathie more facets and explains better how her influence changes Chips in his social interactions with the pupils and masters, like when he stands up to the headmaster who wants him to retire.

Ralston was trying to run Brookfield like a factory - a factory for turning out a snob culture based on money and machines. The old gentlemanly traditions of family and broad acres were changing, as doubtless they were bound to; but instead of widening them to form a genuine inclusive democracy of duke and dustman, Ralston was narrowing them upon the single issue of a fat banking account.

That sounds like Kathie, don't you think?

***

Let's get to the 2002 adaptation now which I hadn't known of before. This will be a lot shorter, promise.
Martin Clunes plays Chips and Victoria Hamilton is Kathie.

Again, the story is changed a little, no sprained ankle, but Kathie is given her chance to speak her mind, about Shaw, Ibsen, the vote for women, and more. Instead of a football match she organizes a dance with girls from a nearby school.
And she addresses the headmaster about a boy being bullied in the worst way because he cried about his mother's death.

That is the big difference in this adaptation. Almost from the start, caning, bullying and fagging (a former practice at schools meaning younger pupils were required to act as personal servants for older ones) are a really big topic while they are only very lightly touched on - if at all - in the novella and movie of 1939 when these practices were sadly still regarded as quite normal.
Also the war scenes were more dramatic, like a plane crashing on the school premises and Chips making sure to help the pilot although he's German.

***

Back to 1984 now, to a six part TV serial with Roy Marsden and Jill Meager.

The serial also follows the novella rather closely (this time we get the football match). As we have a runtime that is almost twice as long as that of the films, though, some embellishments were to be expected.
One of them comes in the person of Mrs. Wickett.
Mrs. Wickett was once a matron at Brookfield and rents rooms out to Mr. Chips in his old age. That's the same as in the films and novella, but in the serial he first meets her when she still works as a maid and he comforts her after she has made a mistake and wants to run away.
She's quite devoted to him and works with him when he gets the post of housemaster despite being a bachelor. So when he returns from his holidays with a wife, we already know there will be problems. Although Kathie tries not to make Mrs. Wickett feel obsolete now, every attempt to contribute to the household or make a change is taken wrongly. Finally they bond over caring for a boy together who's severely ill.
Kathie later dies because she slips and has a heart attack from the fall, her child is stillborn (no idea why they thought that was a better idea).
Another story that was added is that of a pupil who is due for going to France, but can't get himself to go after seeing his father, who has been terribly mutilated in war, in hospital and is therefore arrested as a deserter.

***

There were more adaptations than the three I introduced you to, radio, theater, and a musical film from 1969 with Peter O'Toole and Petula Clark.
 

I couldn't hunt the film down, but after reading about it, I was actually glad I couldn't as it deviated from the original in a way that wouldn't have made me happy.
It is set between the 20s and the 60s, Katherine is a music hall singer. Her background makes a wealthy lord threaten to withdraw a financial endowment, but Katherine threatens back to expose his relationship to a friend of hers.
Oh, and she dies in an air raid after a long marriage.
It really doesn't sound as if I would like it. I don't want my Mr. Chips to sing, either. It's something he would never do.

***

All adaptations I watched were enjoyable in their own way.

I liked Kathie in the 1984 version because Jill Meager gave such competent and yet friendly and understanding vibes. To me, she seemed most like the "new woman" that intimidated Chips so much at first. I could have well imagined her marching as a suffragette.
Victoria Hamilton seemed determined, but a bit too soft for my taste, well, and Greer Garson didn't get the chance to show much more than being a beautiful and kind lady, so you really can't compare.
Roy Marsden was okay, but Martin Clunes definitely showed more layers to his Chips. I thought his best scene was him standing up to the headmaster, with such cold rage when he accused him of running the school like a factory. I think the 2002 film was the most realistic one, not romanticizing life at a public school, and I enjoyed it more than I would have thought.

But let's be honest, I watch Mr. Chips for Robert Donat. For the shyness and the fear to fail, for the sadness about being mediocre as a master (which he is described as in the novella) and the longing to make it, anyway. For the desire to be not just respected but loved by the pupils. For learning to love and to understand, bearing a loss and carrying on, for making jokes and chuckling.
So it's sentimental, okay, but mainly warm-hearted. There's nothing wrong with a bit of escapism every, now and then.
And darn that score that plays with my emotions so well, works every time (and I don't mean the "Blue Danube" which is the theme for Kathy and Chips)! 😉

There, and now you made it all the way through. Aren't you glad?

Take a rest ... for the next time!

Weekend Traffic Jam - Week 179

Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot!
My posts for the link up will go live on Thursdays at 9:30 p.m. EDT or, if you live in the future like I do, on Fridays at 3:30 a.m. CE(S)T.

I finished this bead embroidered pendant the other day. The crazy lace agate is surrounded by two levels of hexagon beads in three different colors, sprinkled with golden seed beads, and of course I once again couldn't resist going free form!
I love hexagon beads and like to sew them on one by one, so I can keep changing the direction a lot. When the light hits all those edges, it produces a beautiful sparkle that is hard to capture in a picture, though, so you just have to take my word for it.

***

And now my contribution to Anne's and Olivia's "Friday Book Snippets" where you share a quote - a sentence or short paragraph - from the beginning of a book you read at the moment and one from page 56 (or another).

Today, mine are from "Professor Unrat" from 1905 by Heinrich Mann. I'm reading it in German as part of my personal classics challenge, but will use snippets from the English translation "Small Town Tyrant".
You may have heard of the movie "Der blaue Engel" ("The Blue Angel") based on it, starring Emil Jannings and Marlene Dietrich, which is also a classic, or maybe you know at least Dietrich's signature song "Falling in Love Again (Can't Help It)". I haven't watched the movie myself (yet?).
It tells the story of a strict teacher whose downfall is falling in love with a singer.

Beginning: "His name being Gaubage, the whole school, of course, called him Garbage. Nothing could have been more simple or more natural; the teachers were always given nicknames. Each new batch of scholars in a class-room, not finding the efforts of their predecessors sufficiently funny, seized on the chance of inventing a still more nimble nickname. Old Garbage, however, had kept the same one for several generations of students, and the whole town knew him by it. Even his colleagues used it out of school - and in the sacred precincts, when his back was turned."

Page 56: "Oh, now she had finished and the audience were clapping and shouting "Bravo". He suddenly found himself clapping, too, and he looked down at his hands with astonishment. He felt a singular desire to stamp on the ground. Luckily he had the strength of character to resist that folly, but he was not annoyed with himself for having felt like that; on the contrary, he smiled, in the enjoyment of thinking himself something of a rake."

***

Back to the Weekend Traffic Jam.
As part of the reboot, we will be featuring a different blog every week.
How about stopping by and saying hello? Let them know we sent you.

This week our spotlight is on I Live For My Dreams.

Sas from I Live For My Dreams says: "Ik ben Sas, schrijfster sinds 2009 van iliveformydreams. Uit de jaren '80." Oh, your Dutch is as non-existent as mine? No problem. You can switch to English at the bottom of each post (one of the times I sadly have to rely on AI).
Okay, here we go: "I am Sas, writer since 2009 for iliveformydreams. From the 80s. Married, Mom to Noa, and in daily life a childcare worker and full-time enthusiast. I have a fondness for London, tea (mugs), squirrels, skating, and reading."

Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!

Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household - The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!

Lisa from Boondock Ramblings shares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.

Cat from Cat's Wire has what she calls a jumping spider brain. She has many interests and will blog about whatever catches her attention - crafts, books, old movies, collectibles or random things.

Rena from Fine Whatever Blog writes about style, midlife, and the "fine whatever" moments that make life both meaningful and fun. Since 2015, she's been celebrating creativity, confidence, and finding joy in the everyday.


Here are some of my picks from last week's link up.

Jill shares pictures of the beautiful wildflowers in the Dryandra Woodland, Western Australia.

Check out the Halloween snacks that Laura and Laurie prepare!

Ann is getting haunted by a ghost ...

Mireille has a black and brown fall combo to show.


Let's link up!

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Silent movies - The Haunted House

Hold on to your seats, ladies and gentlemen, it's going to get really scary now.
Please welcome Mister Buster Keaton in "The Haunted House" from 1921!

Are your nerves ready for the plot (and spoilers)?

Keaton is a bank teller.
And one of his co-workers is a crook who deals with counterfeit money and plans to rob the bank together with his gang and then hide in a "haunted house" in spooky disguises.
The morning goes by with business as usual, that is if you count getting money and glue mixed up.
Now if you think that isn't scary, you seem to have forgotten my toxic relationship with glue. I swear I yelled out loud when I saw this! 😉

Glue, glue everywhere,
hands, floor, bottoms, pockets, and hair!

At that moment, the gang turn up and thanks to the glue Keaton almost manages to thwart the robbery, but when the manager sees him with the gun, they all run after him.
He manages to escape and unknowingly hide in the "haunted" house, but he's not the only one. A theater troupe flees the stage after royally messing up "Faust" and being pelted with vegetables - guess where they end up.

So now we have Buster, the theater people, and the gangsters in the house, scaring and getting scared.
It doesn't help that the stairs keep turning into a slide so Buster has to find ways of avoiding falling down again and again.

GIF by nishaane on Tenor

This isn't the only surprise in the house, though. We have the exploding candle, a trap door, the "living" chair, and of course ghosts, skeletons building a real man, and the devil (Mephisto from the theater)!

Keaton runs and jumps and climbs and falls, but then he finds out that the "ghosts" are just men in sheets.
And finally the bank manager and police have also made it to the house. They fall through the trap door into the basement and arrest the whole gang thanks to Buster who has disguised as a ghost himself by now.

Before being taken away, the boss hits our hero on the head, though, and he's dead.
Two angels show him the long stairway to heaven which he walks up ...

... where he's refused entry by Saint Peter who pulls the lever and turns the stairs into a slide ...

... right into hell.

A helper devil gets to work poking Buster with a burning fork ... which wakes him up as it has just been a dream, but the fire is real!
The bank manager's daughter is very happy to see that he's alive and they embrace.

The two-reeler (runtime 24 minutes) is clearly divided into two parts, the bank and the haunted house.
While there are some fun gags in the bank, such as Buster's clothes being caught for hours in the door of the time locked safe (why didn't he try to take them off?), that part is quite repetitive with the different glue shenanigans.

"After searching everywhere else
the police found him where he was."

The second part, however, was hilarious thanks to Buster Keaton's energy. There were some great pratfalls and jumps, and I liked the choreography of the characters meeting or missing one another.
The main protagonist beside Keaton (and the glue) was of course the stairs/slide combo whose heavenly version may look familiar to you if you have seen the 1946 movie "A Matter of Life and Death" with David Niven (which I can recommend, by the way).

I loved the different ways Buster tries to avoid the fall down the slide by jumping up the last few steps, trying to slide down while it's still stairs, sliding down the bannister, even running up the slide!
So while it wasn't the funniest Keaton film I have seen so far - you also have to keep in mind this was one of the earlier ones - I still enjoyed it.

I hope I didn't scare you too much 😉

Goodbye Mr. Chips - Part 1, The 1939 movie

I'm not saying goodbye to my favorite chips brand today, but will be talking about one of my favorite movies.
You know how I sometimes say I'm fascinated by something and don't know why? One of these things are British boarding schools. It surely started with Enid Blyton's St. Clare's books, in German "Hanni und Nanni" (and, though not British, Oliver Hassencamp's books about "Burg Schreckenstein" which will be a topic for another post).
Boarding schools were (and are?) a quite foreign concept to most German children and being served romanticized stories about them only increased the fascination which for me never went away completely.
In Germany, we don't even have the tradition of wearing school uniforms. There are few schools that have tried to introduce mandatory "school clothing" - meaning there's a collection to choose from, not everyone has to wear the same uniform - but it hasn't caught on. I remember that we even talked about pros and cons in English class 50 years ago.
And still I have a weird soft spot for British school stories that I can't seem to turn off. Show me a cap and gown and chances are I'll have a look.

One of them is "Goodbye Mr. Chips". Before I read the original novella, I knew the movie from 1939 with Robert Donat which is why I want to talk about it first.
Here's its plot.

For the first time in 58 years, retired school master Charles Edward Chipping misses the first day assembly at Brookfield, a public school with a 400 year old history, and gets locked out together with a new pupil.

Back home, he falls asleep and his dreams take him back to when came to the school as new master.
He remembers his first time of taking lower school for preparation and failing miserably at standing up to the pupils' pranks. He reacts by enforcing strict discipline and by unpopular punishments - such as keeping the class in and thus preventing the best cricketeer from playing in an important cup match - which earns him the respect, but not the love of the pupils.
After 20 years, he's senior master but still doesn't get the coveted post of housemaster.

Things change when the German teacher Max Staefel invites him to join him on a walking tour in Austria.
On a mountain hike, Chipping meets the young Kathy Ellis with whom he gets trapped in the mist. Although Kathy has modern feminist ideas like riding a bicycle and wanting the vote, they get along great.

Later, Chipping and Staefel meet Kathy and her friend again in Vienna and spend a happy time together. When they say farewell at the train, Kathy kisses Chipping and they return to Brookfield as a married couple.
Kathy teaches Chips as she calls him now how to gain the pupils' love and trust. She introduces tea invitations and everyone adores her. Thanks to her, Chips even becomes housemaster.
Unfortunately, they are not married for long when Kathy and their baby die during birth and Chips is devastated. He dedicates his whole life to the school again, the way Kathy would have wanted him to, and when the new headmaster urges him to retire as he has become too old-fashioned for the school, he refuses and the governors, some of which have been taught by him, also won't let it happen.

After he has retired, World War I breaks out and as many of the teachers join up including the headmaster, Chips is asked to come back and take the headmastership for as long as needed.
Even during an air raid, he manages to keep the pupils busy to distract them from the danger.
One of his sad duties is to read out the lists of former pupils who have died in the war. Once, he also mentions the death of his old friend Max who had returned back to Austria some years before the war. The boys are surprised to hear him speak about an enemy, but as one of them says, Chips has a lot of funny ideas like that.

The old man stays close to the school all his life.
In the end, he's bed-ridden and he hears the headmaster and doctor talk. The doctor says how lonely he must have been and the headmaster tells him that Chips used to be married once.

When Chips hears the doctor saying what a pity it is he never had children, he replies: "I thought I heard you say it was a pity - pity I never had any children. But you're wrong. I have! Thousands of them, thousands of them ... and all ... boys.".
And before his eyes, the last thing he sees is the queue of boys in call over and then Peter Colley - there were generations of Colleys at Brookfield - saying "Goodbye Mr. Chips."

I know that just from reading about it the movie may seem sappy and sentimental, and yes, maybe it is a little, and yes, maybe it romanticizes the image of public schools for privileged boys as a "special community".
I think it's thanks to Robert Donat being so fantastic in this role - which is still one of his most popular ones - that it really is more heartwarming than sappy, though (a young modern audience might think differently, then again maybe not as there seem to be those who discover classic movies on their own, maybe as a bit of escapism sometimes?).
Seeing the school through Chipping's eyes - as stubbornly traditional as that may be sometimes - and not from the outside prevents the movie from slipping into mere sentimentalism. You may not agree with him on everything, but you understand how he grew to be like that.
Of course, you also can't forget that the movie is set in the years between 1870 and 1933. Can you imagine how different it would be, say, in the years between 1940 and 2003 with all the changes in technology?
In the film, Donat ages 63 years, and helped by the amazing makeup, he just does it perfectly - and won an Oscar for it.

I also liked the other actors, though, particularly in the story of Chips and Kathy (Greer Garson), but Donat really makes this movie.

To me, it's pure comfort food and it feels as if I have known Mr. Chips forever.
That is funny because according to a German page it wasn't dubbed in German and shown here on TV until 1998 (although the translated novella had been around much longer). It's not as if I didn't have one or the other occasion to see movies in English, but this one? I don't think so.
Anyhow, it must have hit a nerve with me right away. Why else would I have bought the book and the DVD and watched the movie regularly?

Now originally my plan had been to write about the novella the movie is based on and two more adaptations as well, but I might have lost you with a post that long. Instead they'll get a post of their own in a few days which you will be able to find here once it's live.