Goodbye, Mr. Chips poster

1969·155 min·Released

Goodbye, Mr. Chips

“He is a shy schoolmaster. She is a music hall star. They marry and immediately have 283 children...all boys!”

Drama
Music
Romance

Academy Award-honoree Peter O'Toole stars in this musical classic about a prim English schoolmaster who learns to show his compassion through the help of an outgoing showgirl. O'Toole, who received his fourth Oscar-nomination for this performance, is joined by '60s pop star Petula Clark and fellow Oscar-nominee Michael Redgrave.

6.7(48 votes)

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Videos

Goodbye, Mr. Chips Official Trailer #1 - Peter O'Toole Movie (1969) HD

Cast & Crew

Peter O'Toole

Peter O'Toole

Arthur Chipping

Petula Clark

Petula Clark

Katherine Bridges

Michael Redgrave

Michael Redgrave

The Headmaster

George Baker

George Baker

Lord Sutterwick

Siân Phillips

Siân Phillips

Ursula Mossbank

Michael Bryant

Michael Bryant

Max Staefel

Jack Hedley

Jack Hedley

William Baxter

Alison Leggatt

Alison Leggatt

Headmaster's Wife

Jenny Runacre

Jenny Runacre

Clinton Greyn

Clinton Greyn

Bill Calbury

Barbara Couper

Barbara Couper

Mrs. Paunceforth

Michael Culver

Michael Culver

Johnny Longbridge

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CinemaSerf

Written on 3/23/2025

I suppose if you are going to reimagine the classic 1939 version of this story, you have to ditch some of that film’s most charming elements and bring it up to date. That’s what Herbert Ross and Leslie Bricusse have done here and for the most part it sort of works. Peter O’Toole takes on the role of the fastidious Latin master at the all-boys “Brookfield” school where he is neither much liked by the staff nor much respected by the pupils. It’s on a trip to London to see a show that he meets it’s star “Katherine” (Petula Clark) but he puts his foot in his mouth rather. On a trip to Pompeii, he encounters her again and this time the seeds of something special are planted. Their return to his school exposes both of them to changing attitudes towards himself and her that tests their blossoming relationship and his professional commitment to something he’d hitherto given his life to and with the Second World war now also looming, there are significant readjustments required to attitudes at the school that will see the final demise of the more traditional class system and the end of an era that, following a wartime tragedy, leaves “Chips” adrift in a world with which he is unfamiliar. It’s a well produced drama with plenty of attention to the detail, but it has lost much of the blue Danube romance of the Robert Donat and Greer Garson version. The “Katherine” character here is much more robust, independent and doubtless a better fit for the late 1960s, but for me the modernisation rendered this a bit disappointingly functional. I also found it lacked a killer musical number as neither “Fill the World with Love” nor “You and I” really stick in the mind for long after their various reprises throughout the film. Maybe I’m a sucker for the original sentiment, but though I enjoyed this enough, it is not a film that tugs at the heartstrings the same way nor does it evoke that sense of declining empire and relevance that added such poignancy before. There is an engaging chemistry, though, between O’Toole and Clark - she certainly knows how to hold a note and it’s a competent reversioning that’s hard not to like.

Media

Goodbye, Mr. Chips Official Trailer #1 - Peter O'Toole Movie (1969) HD

Goodbye, Mr. Chips Official Trailer #1 - Peter O'Toole Movie (1969) HD