Hello, Mr. Chips
Film Score Monthly, which releases a pair of remastered movie soundtracks on CD every month, recently issued a three-disc set of the 1969 Goodbye, Mr. Chips. Presumably this is due to its Leslie Bricusse score having been arranged and conducted by John Williams and, although I questioned devoting three platters to such an odd (and not terribly well-regarded) movie musical I dutifully plunked down the $35 and waited …
The discs arrived last weekend and, somewhat indifferently, I put them on while I puttered on my computer. What I heard was astonishing, and caused me to re-evaluate a movie I saw once, on television, in the early 1970s.
At the time of its release, it was invariably lumped with the many over-produced and ill-conceived movie musicals of the period and criticized as a minor “re-make” of the beloved 1939 Robert Donat-Greer Garson edition. (The story is, of course, an adaptation of James Hilton’s sentimental portrait of a rather unexceptional public school master.) Actually Bricusse did something with this Chips that I’m not aware was attempted on any previous musical—and none after it until Barbra Streisand’s lovely Yentl many years later: the musical numbers, with rare and pointed exceptions, were presented as interior monologues. This was no Hello, Dolly! with grandiose parades and elaborate song-and-dance routines, but a simple story told with a delicacy and restraint rare for the time.
After listening to these discs for the second or third time, I went to Pauline Kael for her review. It was, as I supposed, negative, but I was surprised that even she, so attuned to these things, didn’t see what the filmmakers were trying to do. It may be a small revolution as these things go, but a musical that eschews musical numbers is surely worth commenting upon. (Kael did love Peter O’Toole’s performance, which she regarded as the finest of its year.)
As to the cherished musical-comedy conventions: Yes, the producers (and the screenwriter, Sir Terrence Rattigan) altered Chip’s wife Katherine from a leftist nanny to a musical-comedy star and the time-frame was moved up, from the late 1800s through the 1930s to the 1920s through the 1960s. But, unlike say a Julie Andrews extravaganza of the time (no inherent criticism of Andrews, whom I adore—that’s simply what happened) this didn’t mean Katherine performed a variety of show-biz numbers. She had exactly one, as an introduction to us—and to Chips—plus a raucous but gently mocking school parody she performed with the boys at the Brookfield school. Okay, so some of Petula Clark's melismas are rooted in ‘60s pop. But it’s a voice I love; her rendition of “Old Devil Moon” in the movie of Finian’s Rainbow is one of the vocals I most cherish.
And yes, the filmmakers signed yet another non-singing star—in this case, Peter O'Toole—as their lead. But O’Toole wasn’t called upon to perform endless big numbers, and Bricusse (a past-master of the form, having written Rex Harrison’s Doctor Dolittle songs) composed them with an ear to Sprechstimme, and O’Toole’s vocals are lovely within their limited range, and quietly moving.
What’s especially striking now, at a 37-year remove, is the superb Williams orchestrations. The liner notes—and indeed Bricusse himself in quotation—regard this score as the first of Williams’ career to reflect his highly individual voice. And it’s quite true: you can hear Johnny Williams, the comedy composer, becoming John Williams, the master of orchestral color and dramatic intensity. Bricusse felt his score was not exceptional and that if it seemed so, it was Williams’ accomplishment and not his own.
I think Bricusse—and his legion of critics—are wrong, or at least under-appreciative. This really is a remarkable score. Deliberately pitched (with the exceptions noted above) to no particular time period, it doesn’t date or owe anything to that rather canned “Broadway” sound so prevalent in those days, and which Bricusse himself indulged in his Dolittle songs. (Although recently I was struck by how exquisite his partly-cut Anthony Newley-Samantha Eggar duet “Beautiful Things” is). It's a gentle, introspective set of songs, more like a collection of poems set to music than a big, roistering musical-comedy score. The recurring thematic motif of Chips is the Brookfield anthem, “Fill the World with Love,” and it is this song which has dogged and obsessed me since first hearing these discs a few scant days ago.
At first blush, it seems an odd choice of words for a public school emblem. I mean, fill the world with what?? But in context (as O’Toole explains in one of the on-location interviews included in the FSM package) that expression is used in its old-fashioned, humanistic sense: to do good in the world. The composition has a rangy, ecclesiastical sound that perfectly mimics such things, and the lyric is both simple and eloquent, building a progression from the word “ask” (The blessing I shall ask/Only God can grant me becomes The blessing I shall ask/Will remain unchanging and, finally, And the question I will ask/Only I can answer), one slight variation on the phrase “And to fill the world with love” (Did I fill the world with love?) and from childhood (When the world is new) to adult life (When the sky is blue) to old age (When the night is due).
It’s beautifully, hauntingly done, and it evokes such a strong emotional response it seems almost too profound for even this movie, which I think may well be eminently richer than it was given credit for, and than my own memory of it would indicate. It also strikes me as far less sentimental that the vaunted “original,” in which Greer Garson gives her only really charming, effortless performance but Robert Donat hams it up shamelessly when Chips is an old man, shuffling and nodding like a doddering fool. (And for this Clark Gable’s Rhett Butler lost the Oscar?) I can barely wait to see the DVD, reportedly now in production.
The discs arrived last weekend and, somewhat indifferently, I put them on while I puttered on my computer. What I heard was astonishing, and caused me to re-evaluate a movie I saw once, on television, in the early 1970s.
At the time of its release, it was invariably lumped with the many over-produced and ill-conceived movie musicals of the period and criticized as a minor “re-make” of the beloved 1939 Robert Donat-Greer Garson edition. (The story is, of course, an adaptation of James Hilton’s sentimental portrait of a rather unexceptional public school master.) Actually Bricusse did something with this Chips that I’m not aware was attempted on any previous musical—and none after it until Barbra Streisand’s lovely Yentl many years later: the musical numbers, with rare and pointed exceptions, were presented as interior monologues. This was no Hello, Dolly! with grandiose parades and elaborate song-and-dance routines, but a simple story told with a delicacy and restraint rare for the time.
After listening to these discs for the second or third time, I went to Pauline Kael for her review. It was, as I supposed, negative, but I was surprised that even she, so attuned to these things, didn’t see what the filmmakers were trying to do. It may be a small revolution as these things go, but a musical that eschews musical numbers is surely worth commenting upon. (Kael did love Peter O’Toole’s performance, which she regarded as the finest of its year.)
As to the cherished musical-comedy conventions: Yes, the producers (and the screenwriter, Sir Terrence Rattigan) altered Chip’s wife Katherine from a leftist nanny to a musical-comedy star and the time-frame was moved up, from the late 1800s through the 1930s to the 1920s through the 1960s. But, unlike say a Julie Andrews extravaganza of the time (no inherent criticism of Andrews, whom I adore—that’s simply what happened) this didn’t mean Katherine performed a variety of show-biz numbers. She had exactly one, as an introduction to us—and to Chips—plus a raucous but gently mocking school parody she performed with the boys at the Brookfield school. Okay, so some of Petula Clark's melismas are rooted in ‘60s pop. But it’s a voice I love; her rendition of “Old Devil Moon” in the movie of Finian’s Rainbow is one of the vocals I most cherish.
And yes, the filmmakers signed yet another non-singing star—in this case, Peter O'Toole—as their lead. But O’Toole wasn’t called upon to perform endless big numbers, and Bricusse (a past-master of the form, having written Rex Harrison’s Doctor Dolittle songs) composed them with an ear to Sprechstimme, and O’Toole’s vocals are lovely within their limited range, and quietly moving.
What’s especially striking now, at a 37-year remove, is the superb Williams orchestrations. The liner notes—and indeed Bricusse himself in quotation—regard this score as the first of Williams’ career to reflect his highly individual voice. And it’s quite true: you can hear Johnny Williams, the comedy composer, becoming John Williams, the master of orchestral color and dramatic intensity. Bricusse felt his score was not exceptional and that if it seemed so, it was Williams’ accomplishment and not his own.
I think Bricusse—and his legion of critics—are wrong, or at least under-appreciative. This really is a remarkable score. Deliberately pitched (with the exceptions noted above) to no particular time period, it doesn’t date or owe anything to that rather canned “Broadway” sound so prevalent in those days, and which Bricusse himself indulged in his Dolittle songs. (Although recently I was struck by how exquisite his partly-cut Anthony Newley-Samantha Eggar duet “Beautiful Things” is). It's a gentle, introspective set of songs, more like a collection of poems set to music than a big, roistering musical-comedy score. The recurring thematic motif of Chips is the Brookfield anthem, “Fill the World with Love,” and it is this song which has dogged and obsessed me since first hearing these discs a few scant days ago.
At first blush, it seems an odd choice of words for a public school emblem. I mean, fill the world with what?? But in context (as O’Toole explains in one of the on-location interviews included in the FSM package) that expression is used in its old-fashioned, humanistic sense: to do good in the world. The composition has a rangy, ecclesiastical sound that perfectly mimics such things, and the lyric is both simple and eloquent, building a progression from the word “ask” (The blessing I shall ask/Only God can grant me becomes The blessing I shall ask/Will remain unchanging and, finally, And the question I will ask/Only I can answer), one slight variation on the phrase “And to fill the world with love” (Did I fill the world with love?) and from childhood (When the world is new) to adult life (When the sky is blue) to old age (When the night is due).
It’s beautifully, hauntingly done, and it evokes such a strong emotional response it seems almost too profound for even this movie, which I think may well be eminently richer than it was given credit for, and than my own memory of it would indicate. It also strikes me as far less sentimental that the vaunted “original,” in which Greer Garson gives her only really charming, effortless performance but Robert Donat hams it up shamelessly when Chips is an old man, shuffling and nodding like a doddering fool. (And for this Clark Gable’s Rhett Butler lost the Oscar?) I can barely wait to see the DVD, reportedly now in production.
posted by Scott Ross at 8:26 PM
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