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!

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.