Review of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) by Ice R — 28 Jul 2009

Considering her cortege of acclaimed performances (Diana Barrie in California Suite, Charlotte Bartlett in A Room with a View, the Countess of Trentham in Gosford Park, and even Caro Bennett in The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood), one might have thought that Dame Maggie Smith would be destined to join Claude Rains, Thomas Mitchell, George Sanders, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Thelma Ritter, John Hurt, and the like among the pantheon of cinema's greatest character actors.

However, her high-octane performance here as the iconoclastic Jean Brodie, a woman as brutally, uncompromisingly selfish in her narrowed view of the world as she is liberating and inspirational to her gaggle of impressionable schoolgirls, proves her remarkable power as a leading actress.

Ronald Neame's film, overall, is a rather lackluster work; the motif of the shackle-breaking pedagogue would reach an unparalleled apotheosis with Peter Weir's Dead Poets Society (and it has yet to be rivaled).

Smith's razor-tongued, naively Byronic performance as the extreme Miss Brodie is the glowing epicenter of this rather mundane work. (It is, nonetheless, a particular treat for those who love David Lean's Brief Encounter to see the marvelous Celia Johnson as the vinegary headmistress Miss Mackay.

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