The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – 1969 | 116 mins | Drama | Colour

Plot Synopsis

Jay Presson Allen adapts her own stage play based on Muriel Spark’s sentimental and macabre novella. The story omits much of the wider world of the oppressive 1930s outside and is narrowed to within the halls of an Edinburgh girl’s school where maverick Miss Brodie imparts her own rarefied beliefs to her impressionable ‘Brodie girls’, but her influence gradually causes a stir. In a role originally intended for Vanessa Redgrave, Dame Maggie Smith won a Best Actress Oscar for her stunning tour-de-force as the eccentric teacher. There’s strong support from Smith’s then-husband Robert Stephens as the knowing, married art teacher, and Celia Johnson as the formidable opponent headmistress determined to sack her.

In 1930s Edinburgh, middle-aged Scottish teacher Jean Brodie educates pupils of the affluent at Marcia Blaine School for Girls. She inspires her students with her ideas on art, music, history, and politics – the latter based on romantic idealism that leads her to express admiration for the fascist leader Mussolini in Italy. She longs to be romantically attracted to caddish Teddy Lloyd (Robert Stephens), a married art master and a sometime painter, whose jealousy she hopes to inflame by flirting with dour fellow teacher Gordon Lowther (Gordon Jackson).

Her teaching methods and impropriety alarm headmistress Miss Mackay (Celia Johnson), who vows to sack Brodie should her suspicions of the teacher’s unwholesome influence be confirmed. Brodie has assembled a small coterie of four adoring student and allows her personal interests to override her duties as a teacher. Her personal and professional life begins to unravel when one of her pupils, Mary, is inspired by Brodie’s praise for General Franco to fight in Spain alongside her brother. Having always been cynical of Brodie’s teachings and hypocrisies, it’s left to the treacherous Sandy (Pamela Franklin) to betray her teacher to the school board. Sandy condemns Brodie’s influence and admits she has been Teddy’s illicit lover, that Mary futilely died fighting on the opposite side to her brother and continues by denouncing her fascism and dangerous influence on students.