There are some films that you say to yourself, this movie probably doesn’t “speak” to me so I probably won’t like it. That was the case with the 1969 British film The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, screenplay written by Jay Presson Allen, based on her stage play that itself was based on the novel by Muriel Spark. The story centers around a teacher and her especially chosen disciples at the Marcia Blaine school for girls in Edinburgh, Scotland in the 1930s. I suspected that it was a slow-moving, overly “talky” period piece with politics on its mind. But I also recalled when I was a kid that there was a MAD magazine parody about the film, which suggested a certain amount of “kink” in it, like another film around that time, The Valley of the Dolls. When Twilight Time released it on Blu-ray, that seemed to be how they were “selling” it:
So I was intrigued enough to purchase the Blu-ray and see what this was all about; after all, Maggie Smith as Miss Jean Brodie won an Oscar for her performance; there is some “kinkiness” in it, but it is mostly of the “talk” variety, and the cover is somewhat misleading because none of the principle characters have blonde hair. I found this to be a surprisingly absorbing film despite being slow-moving and “talky,” and it is one where it is important to pay attention to what is said; Miss Brodie may seem to be a bit eccentric, but she actually believes in the things she says, which upon careful listening seem inexcusable by today’s sensibility, especially that which involves her fascination with dictators. From the beginning, those beliefs plant the seeds for her eventual fate. While she may seem master of all things (a "dictator" herself), in the end Miss Brodie is forced to confront the reality pressed on her by one of her own “creations,” that her “truth” is not the only valid one.
The film begins by introducing all of the main characters during the opening credits, the actors names appearing on screen as they do. In his audio commentary, director Ronald Neame states he wanted to make clear that this movie belonged to the people who appeared in front of the camera, not those behind it, as so many films seem to be about today.
We see Miss Brodie at work, attempting to mold her students into her image. We see immediately that she prefers “her” girls to be readily susceptible to her personal “instruction.” There are two new girls in the classroom; one is clearly not her “type,” because this girl already has the confidence of achievement, having been a member of the British version of the Girl Scouts, learning to tie knots and flag folding; she even has six merit badges.
Miss Brodie cuts her off; she is clearly not a “prime” candidate to be a Brodie Girl, since she already has the confidence of her own achievements. But the other new student, Mary McGregor (Jane Carr), is a shy girl who speaks with a stutter and admits to having no interests; she is a perfect candidate for being a Brodie Girl. “That is what I am for, Mary McGregor, to provide you with interests.”
We learn that Miss Brodie has come afoul of the “status quo,” which to her means book learning. She wants to teach her girls about “life,” or least the way she defines it. They won’t be learning about history, math or science in her classroom, and if they are paid a visit by the headmistress, they are to open their books and “pretend.”
During class, Miss Brodie asks the girls who is the greatest Italian painter; one of them answers Leonardo da Vinci. Wrong, she says; it is Giotto. Why? Because he is her favorite painter; only her opinion matters, not that of the generality. Here we see a pattern in which “her” girls are really being taught not to have a mind of their own and make their own decisions; they are simply being instructed to think and act like Miss Brodie herself—as one her favorites would later accuse her of, to satisfy her own vanity.
Miss Brodie observes the photograph of the former prime minister Stanley Baldwin hanging in the back of the room. It is still there, she says, because the headmistress, Miss McKay (Celia Johnson, who was so memorable in the David Lean film Brief Encounter), believes in his motto, “safety first.” She covers up the photograph with a reproduction of a Giotto painting, telling her students “safety does not come first.” Goodness, truth and beauty come “first.” As we will see as the film progresses, Miss Brodie’s ideas of what these concepts mean in practice will jeopardize her “safety.”
Then we come to the concept of one’s “prime.” To Miss Brodie, it is when someone reaches the state that allows them to have “insight” into the concepts she believes are the “best.” Her girls “must be on the alert to recognize your prime, at whatever time it may occur, and live it to the full.”
She then speaks of a former lover named Hugh, who fought and died in the Great War, and recites a poem by Robert Burns that brings tears to the eyes of Monica (Shirley Steedman), one of the four girls Miss Brodie will choose to be her aiders and abettors. But one of them, Sandy (Pamela Franklin), already betrays a hint of skepticism about Miss Brodie’s power to elicit such a response.
At that moment Miss McKay enters the classroom, and observing Monica in tears, request to know the reason for it. She expresses skepticism that a history lesson can provoke such tears. Miss Brodie lies that she has been teaching the class about the Battle of Flodden, where not one Scottish noble family didn’t lose a family member, and this of course is in the history book; this is the “game” that Miss Brodie has been playing with Miss McKay, although the latter is clearly not fooled by it, and she is biding her time waiting for first-hand evidence that Miss Brodie is flouting the school’s rules. Miss McKay notices that the photograph of Baldwin has been covered-up, but leaves the classroom, making no mention of it.
Miss Brodie commends Monica for not answering Miss McKay and giving away the game, but Sandy points out Miss Brodie’s lie, to which Miss Brodie scolds her: “do as I say, not as I do”—which is speaking out of both sides of her mouth. She further insults Sandy by calling her a “child” and “far from your prime.” In fact the precocious Sandy already has a mind of her own, and as Miss Brodie admits later, has “insight” beyond her years. Sandy will follow Miss Brodie only for so long as they remain of one mind.
At this point let me go off road and observe that despite her exceptional performance in this film, holding her own against Smith, Pamela Franklin was never able to parlay this success into a notable film career as an adult. She had previously appeared with Deborah Kerr in The Innocents as a child actress, as well as in The Nanny with Bette Davis, and before this film she played the kidnap victim in The Night the Following Day, with Marlon Brando. After Prime she did a couple more films in Britain, the comedy Sinful Davey and the thriller And Soon the Darkness. But then she moved to Hollywood and did mostly television work, interspersed with some mostly B-grade horror flicks like Necromancy, The Legend of Hell House, and her last non-television appearance, The Food of the Gods, one of those so-bad-it-really-is-that-bad films, when Franklin was just 26. By 1981 her ego was hurt by just being another interchangeable character actor, and in her audio commentary for Prime she asserts that she was perfectly content to leave the business and be a housewife and mother.
Continuing on with the film, Miss Brodie encounters another former lover, the art teacher Teddy Lloyd (Robert Stephens), who apparently still pines after her, probably because she doesn’t have any moral or ethical qualms about having an affair with a married man with five children—or make that six. She sarcastically “congratulates” him on the new birth, criticizing his Catholic faith which does not permit birth control or abortion. Teddy retorts that his faith forgives human imperfection; why can’t she?
Miss Brodie isn’t interested in such a discussion, especially when applied to herself; “truth” is an absolute—and it must be her truth to be true. But her “truth” can be of a disturbing variety: Has Teddy never heard of Marie Stopes, the “architect for constructive birth control and racial progress?” Knowing what we know today, Stopes was—like Margaret Sanger—another one of those early feminist “pioneers” for whom support for abortion was in fact motivated by eugenics, “racial purity” and racism. Thus at this point we see that Miss Brodie operates with a dictatorial style with her students that is her way or the highway (we will soon see that she admires dictators), and also that her morality and ethics are subject to question. I’m not sure that Stopes’ “racial purity” beliefs were meant to be examined at the time this film was made; probably not, because it was only recently, in the wake of the George Floyd protests, did the abortion rights organization that bears her name decide to drop “Marie Stopes” from its title.
The other female teachers at the school seem to harbor petty grudges against Miss Brodie, and complain about how her students in their classes all seem to act in the way Brodie tells them to; supposedly none of them wash their faces save with cream, as Miss Brodie has told them she has done for 20 years. The men—or at least Teddy and the music teacher, Gordon Lowther (Gordon Jackson)—find her “fascinating.” Mr. Lowther is her current lover, a timid, middle-aged man who wants to marry Miss Brodie, but while she consents to sleep with him, she has no intention of marrying so long as she is still in her “prime”—which she expects to last for quite a few more years.
We find out during a picnic that Mary McGregor and her brother are orphans who are under the care of a banker who controls their inheritance, which is apparently substantial. Mary’s brother seems to be her complete opposite—restless, bored with school and looking for adventure. Later, Sandy and Jenny (Diane Grayson) are discussing sex, which they only understand in a superficial way. After determining that Brodie cares more about “her girls” than either Teddy or Mr. Lowther, Sandy observes that Miss Brodie intends to hang on to her “prime” by not marrying; mothers and fathers don’t have “primes”—only sexual intercourse. Despite her apparent precociousness, Sandy is also a bit of a prude; as they do a tango together, she wonders why the “urge” wouldn’t wear-off by the time a couple got their clothes off, and that Miss Brodie probably didn’t have sex with Hugh because “love is above that.”
In class, Miss Brodie regales her girls about Benito Mussolini, who cleaned up the streets (of various forms of “litter”), and instructs them on the correct spelling of “Fascisti,” which she apparently considers herself as one—and expects her girls to be so also. Mussolini is called Il Duce, meaning the “the leader,” she tells them. At that moment Miss McKay’s assistant walks in, and Miss Brodie, sensing danger, in an instant ends that discussion: “We move on.” It is clear that Miss Brodie is treading on dangerous ground here, and she doesn’t want word of her fascination with fascism getting outside the classroom. In her mind Mussolini may be a politician, but because he started out as a journalist, she sees him as a fellow “intellectual.”
We will also learn she is a “fan” of Spanish fascist dictator Francisco Franco; interestingly, there is no mention of Hitler, despite the fact that he was a failed “artist,” and that she shares his belief in “racial progress.” Miss Brodie admonishes Mary McGregor to straighten her shoulders, and that “Brodie Girls” should hold their heads high in the world. But at this point we must ask ourselves if the place she is leading them to is the correct path. Mary McGregor is the most susceptible to Miss Brodie’s philosophy, since she was an empty vessel ready to be filled with whatever a strong personality wanted to put in it. Sandy, on the other hand, is willing to question the “status quo”—even that which exists in Miss Brodie’s own class.
Despite her stated disdain for sex, that doesn’t mean Sandy doesn’t think about it; when Miss Brodie and Mr. Lowther are out picking apples, she and her friends invade Mr. Lowther’s large home, where they find Miss Brodie’s lingerie hidden underneath a pillow in his bed.
In the next scene we see more of that “kink”: Teddy is teaching his art class, and the girls are seen here giggling at the nude figures in a painting, especially at the “curves.”
More of that “kink”: after she endures some “torture,”
Mary McGregor admits to walking in on Miss Brodie and Teddy kissing, Sandy demonstrates what a “long, lingering kiss” is supposed to look like, accompanied by the loud giggling of the others:
Miss McKay interrupts this demonstration, which only fuels her determination to expel Miss Brodie from the school; she tells the girls that she would be more impressed with Miss Brodie’s girls if they did better in their math classes. She and Miss Brodie have a meeting in which Miss McKay makes one more effort to convince her that the school should not be encouraging “progressive” ideas, and she has noticed the “precociousness” of her students—especially her “special” girls, like Sandy.
Miss Brodie professes to be proud of her girls’ “awareness,” which does not include book learning, since “education” by that definition only leads “out.” Miss McKay and Miss Brodie have a discussion about the meaning of “education,” and it is clear that even though Miss McKay is a bit stodgy, we are beginning to understand that she is right, and that where Miss Brodie is leading her girls will, or at least for her most vulnerable disciple, have terrible consequences that she is too blinded by her ideology to accept personal responsibility for.
Miss McKay is also concerned about her relationship with Mr. Lowther, who is in her words is not a “worldly man” and thus not capable of seeing the “recklessness” of others, especially since he is not only infatuated with Miss Brodie, he in fact wants to marry her, although she refuses to do that as long as she is still in her “prime.” Miss McKay sees Mr. Lowther as just another victim of Miss Brodie, and is concerned about how this “affair” is disrupting the faculty (we have already seen that the female staff dislikes her). But Miss Brodie, of course, will not abide by the “status quo.” Miss McKay warns Miss Brodie that because she is answerable to the school’s board of governors, if word of her “teaching methods” reaches their ears, there is nothing she can do to stop their actions.
Meanwhile, in the library Sandy and Jenny are forging a letter supposedly addressed to Mr. Lowther and written by Miss Brodie, which discusses their sexual relationship. Their giggling gets the attention of the librarian, and they are forced to hide the letter in a book which the librarian confiscates.
There follows a couple of scenes of girls learning chemistry and sewing, although none of the “Brodie Girls” seem to be in attendance. We see those girls in Teddy’s studio, painting Jenny. Because they both have red hair, Miss Brodie has tried to interest Teddy in Jenny as her “stand-in” as his lover; but when he paints her portrait, he has replaced Jenny’s features with that of Miss Brodie’s. All the girls leave except Sandy who has arrived late in the rain and is all wet. She takes off her wet stockings, and Teddy wonders what her game is.
When she sarcastically remarks that all the subjects of his paintings look like “one big Brodie,”
he calls her a “clever cat” and attempts to kiss her, more to see how she reacts to it. Sandy likes to talk about sex, but in practice is alarmed by it; she wipes the kiss off her mouth like a child would, because it is “icky.”
This changes when she has tea with Miss Brodie, who tells Sandy that Jenny is the “pretty” one of their group, and that her function is to be Miss Brodie’s “spy.” Sandy looks at herself in the mirror; she has obviously taken offense at being pigeon-holed as being the one who is not “pretty”—and this motivates her to become Teddy’s lover, not Jenny.
Naturally, the letter that Sandy and Jenny wrote turns up, and using it as evidence that Miss Brodie is poisoning her students’ minds, Miss McKay demands her resignation, which Miss Brodie refuses to do.
After this meeting, Mr. Lowther again tries to make an “honest woman” out of Miss Brodie, who accuses him of having an interest in Miss Lockhart, the chemistry teacher, which he denies. She warns him not to see her again, more out of self-interest about losing a “lover,” and in her mind this is permissible for a woman in her “prime.”
She then encounters Teddy, and again tries to get him interested in Jenny, who is “primitive and free” and “above the ordinary rung of lovers.” Teddy is annoyed by this attempt to foist this “little girl” into his bed. He has already observed that Miss Brodie sleeps with an “artist,” only to be “shocked” when she wakes up with a man.
The old Brodie Girls have moved on in grade, but Miss Brodie continues on with her old ways with a new class. She again dispenses with “history,” instead providing the girls with a visual tour of places she has visited with a slide projector, mostly of antiquity in Italy—and, of course, her favorite topics, Mussolini and fascism. She tries to induce in her students the same awe of a huge crowd supposedly mesmerized by Il Duce’s pronouncements, following his “noble destiny.” He is a “Roman worthy of his heritage. The greatest Roman of them all.”
We can see how deluded she is, and we can easily see her as a follower of Sir Oswald Mosley’s British fascist movement. Miss Brodie clearly does not just have an idealistic view of Italy past and present, but a highly personal view of its artists to the point of tears, which concerns a girl who she mistakenly calls “Jenny” because of her red hair.
Next we see Teddy painting a completely nude Sandy, who apparently has become not only more “comfortable” with the idea of sexuality, but has also become Teddy’s lover at some point instead of Jenny. He still calls Miss Brodie “magnificent,” but Sandy calls her “ridiculous,” and now we see that the break between Miss Brodie and Sandy is near closure, although Miss Brodie still remains under the illusion that Sandy is still a “Brodie Girl.” Sandy thinks her mind is stretched “astonishingly” for a girl of 17, which Teddy thinks if true is not only astonishing, but “unnatural.”
Sandy mentions that Miss Brodie is raising funds to help Franco in Spain. Miss Brodie has learned that Mary McGregor’s adventure-seeking brother has run off to fight in Spain, and she is “beside herself with joy.” Teddy retorts that Miss Brodie knows nothing about politics or politicians; she “simply invests all leaders with her own romantic vision.” Sandy observes that the Brodie Girls are Miss Brodie’s own “Fascisti,” and that her dislike of the Girl Guides was out of simple jealousy. Sandy muses that she should have joined the “Brownies”—the second level of the Girl Guides—instead of being a “Brodie Girl”; Teddy accuses her of being spiteful. Then Sandy insists on seeing the painting of herself, and is insulted by the evidence that Teddy still has Miss Brodie etched on his mind, since it was her expectation that she could supplant Miss Brodie in Teddy’s affections. Their affair is effectively finished, but it only increases Sandy’s bitter feelings about how Miss Brodie has interfered with her own vision of herself.
Things rapidly go downhill for Miss Brodie after that. She loses her closest supporters in the faculty when Mr. Lowther becomes engaged to be married to Miss Lockhart, alienates Teddy for good, and the spiteful Sandy is one step away from turning on her. It only takes one more mistake by Miss Brodie, and it is the most serious one of all. Believing that Mary McGregor’s brother is fighting for the fascist Franco, she exhorts her young charges to “fight when called for,” even if they are girls. She is “ecstatic” when Mary McGregor, who happens to be there listening to this harangue, tells Miss Brodie that she is ready to “fight” for the fascist cause with her brother. Are you prepared to fight? “Yes, Miss Brodie.”
But off to the side listening to this is Sandy, who says to herself “No, Miss Brodie.”
Later, Monica and Jenny express disbelief that Miss Brodie would allow Mary McGregor to leave for Spain. Teddy joins the conversation, and he expresses disbelief that Miss Brodie was responsible for this because Mary McGregor couldn’t “negotiate her way through Edinburgh.” Sandy contemptuously tells him how Miss Brodie would have the trip so carefully mapped out that even a fool like Mary McGregor could figure it out.
Teddy is appalled to find Miss Brodie sticking colored pins in a map of Spain, denoting troop movements.
Of course, tragedy ensues; A newspaper arrives with the story that Mary McGregor has been killed when the train she was traveling on was attacked by fighters.
Sandy listens to Miss Brodie tell her students the “real” story about Mary McGregor before they get it from the school, telling them she died a “hero” and betraying no remorse for her own part in her death. This is too much for Sandy, who knows it is Miss Brodie who is to blame for Mary McGregor’s death.
We then see her knocking on Miss McKay’s office door.
During a school party in which Sandy refuses to dance with Teddy, he has a final tiff with Miss Brodie, reminding her of the news of the engagement of Mr. Lowther and Miss Lockhart, and now she has no more “lovers,” because he is no longer willing to go where she leads.
Brodie has a final confrontation with Miss McKay, who informs her that the board of governors has demanded her resignation, effective immediately, for “preaching politics.” Miss Brodie insists that she will protest the board’s order, and she has the support of her “girls.” This time it is Miss McKay who contemptuously retorts “Do you?”
Miss Brodie returns to her classroom one last time, and there waiting for her is Sandy. Unaware that Sandy has turned on her, she speaks to her as if she still has her full support as a “Brodie Girl.” Sandy’s responses startle her.
Sandy takes offense at the
suggestion that she is Brodie’s “spy,” and mocks her assumption that Jenny is Teddy’s
new lover, asserting that she herself is. Sandy does make one accusation that
may be true of herself, but not of Miss Brodie: that they had been both more
interested in Teddy’s body than his mind. Miss Brodie was in fact less
infatuated with Teddy and Mr. Lowther as sexual partners than by the fact that
they were both “artists.” When Miss Brodie pompously asserts that she is above reproach in regard to Mary McGregor's death
Sandy goes in for the “kill.” She accuses Miss Brodie of thinking only of herself first, not of “her” girls, only using them. She really didn’t care about Mary McGregor save that she was “totally suggestible,” and in a particularly vicious tone asserts that this appealed to Miss Brodie’s “vanity”:
Now Miss Brodie realizes that it was Sandy who “betrayed” her, but in Sandy’s mind she had simply “put a stop” to her because she was “dangerous and unwholesome” and young girls should not be exposed to her. She accuses Miss Brodie of being Mary McGregor’s de facto murderer and feeling no personal remorse or responsibility for it whatever. Mary McGregor did not die a “hero” but as a fool; her brother was fighting with the republican army, not for the fascists—Miss Brodie had sent her to fight for the wrong side. When Miss Brodie accuses her of being her “assassin,” Sandy retorts that she is a “ridiculous” woman who always resorts to striking “attitudes.” When Miss Brodie accuses her of behaving like a “conqueror,” Sandy throws it back in her face, noting her admiration for “conquerors” like Mussolini. As she leaves the classroom, Miss Brodie shouts after her “assassin,” having likened her to Julius Caesar’s assassins.
The film ends with the end of the term, and Miss McKay sending the girls off with a suitably stirring speech about what the school hoped to achieve for them.
The final scene has Monica and Jenny leaving the school together in happy conversation, but Sandy walks silently behind them.
Miss Brodie’s words going through her mind, about putting “old heads on young shoulders” and “Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life.” There are tears in her eyes; what they mean is a matter of conjecture.
Miss Brodie was many things, but it would be wrong to call her merely “eccentric”; that would be letting her off too lightly. We may forgive her “non-traditional” views about intimate relations, and how the sexual partners in her life willingly played by her rules. She saw “art” as the sole source of beauty and “truth,” but of the latter, in the pursuit of what? For her, “art” could only be understood in the context of how it advanced a political and social movement like fascism, or at least in the form of Mussolini, the supposed “greatest” of all Romans. She saw her power over her students’ thoughts in dictatorial terms that brooked no question. She saw herself as the “Il Duce” of “her” girls, her naiveté about the dangers of fascist ideology combined with the demand of unswerving loyalty could, potentially, cause harm to her girls—and it did, at least for Mary McGregor.
The film does not allow us insight into the “Brodie Girls” acceptance of her fascist ideology; in fact we are not totally certain how much of Miss Brodie’s “teaching” actually rubbed-off on them, at least permanently. As Miss McKay observed, they were more notable for their “precociousness” than for their book learning. That “teaching” certainly did have a profound effect on an empty vessel eager to please like Mary McGregor, but by their banter at the end of the film it is not clear that Monica or Jenny have “old heads” on their shoulders. Only Sandy seems to be “old” beyond her years. This is probably what she was lamenting at the end of the film.
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