Although MGM spent a lot of money to remake Goodbye Mr. Chips the film is good, but doesn't come close to the spirit of the classic version that got Robert Donat an Oscar amidst the shower of Oscars that Gone With The Wind got in 1939. Yet the best thing this film has going for it is Peter O'Toole cast against type as Mr. Chipping of Brookfield school.
Two things were radically different from this and the Donat version. First the book by James Hilton and the Donat version cover a period from before the Boer War until after World War I. This Goodbye Mr. Chips starts in The Roaring Twenties and ends post World War II a totally different period than the one Hilton was writing about. James Hilton was 14 years gone when this film came out, I wonder what he would have thought of the change in time period.
Secondly the marriage of Chips is a small part of the original story because the character of the wife dies young and in childbirth. Chips is a saddened widower for most the time the story covers which is a very radical change that Terrence Rattigan made to the original story.
Peter O'Toole and Petula Clark have a great deal more time together than Robert Donat and Greer Garson did in the original film. I guess the reason for that is to give Petula Clark a lot of songs. As she's a singer and O'Toole does his songs in the manner originated by Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady, this is one area where she blows him off the screen. The best numbers in the score by Leslie Bricusse are the production numbers London Is London and later on the one that Petula does with the Brookfield boys, School Days.
Michael Redgrave has a nice turn as the kind, but somewhat traditional schoolmaster. And although she only has a few scenes, Sian Phillips is brilliant as the Bohemian type actress who is a friend of Petula Clark's and a closer friend to Lord George Baker who is trying to get O'Toole sacked from Brookfield. Phillips's character might well have been based on Gertrude Lawrence.
When James Hilton wrote his best known stories Hollywood was fortunate to have a pair of actors who were born to play Hilton heroes, Robert Donat and Ronald Colman. They both exemplify the way the British see themselves, purveyors of civilization, sportsmanship, and fair play to the world. Despite the uphill battle to come close to what Donat gave us with his Mr. Chips, O'Toole did get a nomination for Best Actor, but lost to John Wayne for True Grit. Goodbye Mr. Chips also got a nomination for Best Musical Scoring for Leslie Bricusse and John Williams.
We may yet see another big screen adaption of Goodbye Mr. Chips and maybe this one will be set in modern times if such a film could be made. Sounds like a perfect part for Anthony Hopkins.
