The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - The Book

That would be Jennie (Diane Grayson) the pretty one Miss Brodie was trying to palm off to Teddy Lloyd. In the movie she is telling Sandy that Jennie would be Teddy's lover one day, and Sandy strikes the blow by telling her that she, Sandy, already is his lover.

 

bumpity bump bump bump.

 

I just watched this movie again this weekend, for want of nothing else to look at. Jennie's hair was actually blonde, not red, if this was the character you were thinking of, Thor (?).

Paradox what are you bumping about now? :box:

 

Things that go "bump" in the night...might be Paradox!

 

Elle, I hadn't read this thread before, but read some of the book TPOMJB this weekend and noticed one character stating during a writing assignment she couldn't remember how to spell "possession," how many s's?

I figured those who know this book chapter and verse had seen this, but I also thought many of us might not have caught it, so posted it on another thread. Paradox bumped up this thread so we can see where he and others had made comparisons of the book, the murder, and Patsy's pathology.

Thanks, Paradox. I'll be looking more closely at this thread.

 

that is very interesting about the spelling of possession.

 

I have never read the book KK, just seen the movie, and from what paradox and others had to say about the book, I noticed the movie wasn't exactly like the book in some parts mentioned.

Of course "possession" in the ransom note was spelled "posession." It does make you think, doesn't it? Paradox puts up a good argument about the connections.

 

Well, hell Elle, I remember Jenny's hair being red the last time I watched the movie, and it's been quite awhile. Maybe it's reddish blonde. Good movie, at any rate.

 

Did you watch it before or after the wine? Te he I hope I'm still around after you watch it for a second time (?). Tell you what Thor, when you watch it again, and find one red hair, I'll send you a few bottles of your favourite wine.

When Paradox and Cranberry were discussing it again some time ago, I sent away for the DVD, because it's a movie I can enjoy watching again in a few months.

You mentioned Maggie Smith, so this is the same version I have which was made in 1969.

I don't know how Maggie Smith could watch her real life husband Robert Stephens playing Teddy Lloyd the art teacher making out with a naked Sandy Stranger (Pamela Franklin) on the set. Bet you she took off when these scenes were being made.

When I saw the movie on the big screen way back then, they did not show Pamela Franklin (Sandy Stranger) naked. She's in the buff on my DVD. Times have changed.

Gerald McEwan played Miss Brodie in another TV version (1978). I haven't seen this one yet. McEwan is another very good actress.

 

Or what did Patsy think of that scene?

 

See herself replaced with a child (?).

 

I only saw the movie. In it Sandy does not come across (to me) as evil. She is headstrong and she is very bright and does have the affair with her teacher. But she does not come across as evil.

I guess in the book Sandy is portrayed as evil?

 

Speaking of movies that might be relevant to the dynamics of incest, I happened upon a movie last night, a Danish movie with subtitles, that I'd never seen before. It was on the IFC channel, no commercials or editing for TV.

It was The Celebration, and it is brilliant. But very sad. It's about a family getting together to celebrate their rich, powerful patriarch's 60th birthday. During the toasts, a son reveals to all how his father raped him and his twin sister methodically for years. Also how his mother knew because she walked in on them one night and left the room, as she was told, and never stopped it.

It's an independent film with a shaky, dark, grainy camera style, so if you rent it or see it, it's not a slick Hollywood production. But the style is deliberate and works very well for telling this story. It is also fiction, and I haven't found yet any interview or article in which the author says it's based in fact, though I can't imagine it didn't come from someone's true experience with incest, either as victim or knowing a victim. The story is about how incest in families is treated: denial, blame and abuse the victim who speaks out, and finally, move past it as quickly as possible.

But the devastation to the victims is astutely portrayed in this film. One commits suicide (before the celebration takes place) and the remaining victim is revealed to have had many mental illnesses and much heartbreak. It left me feeling very sad, because I kept thinking, THIS is exactly how such behavior is treated: the incestor is protected and the victim villified.

I again refer back to Marilyn Van Durber's book, Miss America By Day. She tells her story of incest from age 5 to age 18, and it's so honest it's hard to read. But she tells the truth of it. That Patsy Ramsey was always the perpetual beauty pageant contestant, a skilled liar as we saw, who denied the evidence of JonBenet's molestation before the night she died, against all the evidence to the contrary, has always struck me as parallel to Van Durber's story.

 

Sandy didn't come across as evil to me either, sb. Sandy saw through Miss Brodie, and aimed to prove her wrong, which she did. I've mentioned this before. I was told that Teddy Loyd in the book, tells Sandy she's ugly. This is not in the movie, and Pamela Franklin as Sandy Stranger is anything but ugly.
Sandy has large eyes, not tight eyes like the book character Sandy," as Cranberry quoted in the earlier posts on this thread. One couldn't make Pamela Franklin ugly if they tried, not even with horn rimmed glasses.

Sandy also socks it to Jean Brodie by telling her that she was Teddy's lover not Jenny.

 

I think the question of Good and Evil is central to the Sandy character. The movie begins with the close-up of the Biblical quote and ends with it being spoken as Sandy is shown at graduation. I can see her flinch at the words.

Was she virtuous, moral, justified in her alliance with McKay and her actions against Brodie? Or were her actions self serving, one of the hallmarks of Evil?

If a homely actress had been used in the movie, or if they could have done to Franklin what they did to Charlise Theron in Monster, the questions of acceptance/rejection and retribution/justice would be much different.

As it is the "pretty" Sandy is too easliy taken to be the wronged heroine.

 

Hi Elle,

Remember when he has all the girls in his attic and he goes through each one of them and he picks one of the girls as the "beautiful" one and Sandy as the "smart" one (but I don't know the words he uses for Sandy), but Sandy is very hurt by his characterization of this. He is not calling her ugly but he does not call her the beautiful one. And then she looks at the painting he has done and of course it looks like JBrodie and she says "we'll all look lik eone big Brodie".

Sandy is really great. I know that the oscar went to the actress who playedr Brodie, but Sandy was my favorite.


I thought she was the most interesting of all the girls, so she acted her part well. I would not say she was beautiful, but I liked watching her the most. She was very very interesting and that is far better than beauty to me. However, I digress.

 

Yes, I remember that, sb. Teddy Lloyd is going over what Jean Brodie has passed on to him about the girls with each one of them, stopping at Jenny and saying "You're the pretty one." This scene probably covers the scene where in the book, he tells Sandy she's ugly, I'm thinking. Hard to remember word for word.

Pamela Franklin is an excellent actress. I have seen her in a lot of movies, but haven't seen her for quite a few years now, but according to Independent Movie Data Base,the list is long. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0291512/

I can see why you think Pamela should have won the award. They should have given out two oscars that night.

When it comes to a book and a movie, it's not easy to have a true discussion, because of the changes in script, but it's still good to see these feisty characters come to life on the big screen. I really am a movie buff.

I thought it was funny when Sandy looked at her portrait, expecting to see that she had changed Teddy Lloyd's thinking. Wrong, she still looked like Miss Brodie, and when Sandy spouts this to Miss Brodie, Brodie looks like the cat who had stolen the cream.

 

Just an excellent movie. I am going to rent it this weekend. Love it. I love the opening with all the girls going to school.

 

Kind of uniform I wore myself, only the tunic was navy blue. Seems like a hundred years ago sb. :-(

 

Her sense of power originates from knowing her motivations, her strengths, her foibles and her desires. She acts on these instincts. Some of her power is maternal (though she is unmarried) and she nurtures the best of her girls, the "creme de la creme" as she calls them, as if they were her own daughters. She seizes opportunity for love, she rebels against anyone who tries to reign her in. But, does she over-reach herself or is she being unfairly treated as that most misunderstood of all creatures, a middle-aged, intelligent woman?



Found above as part of a review on Amazon.com. I thought it was interesting. And also below:

In a number of ways, the title character, a school mistress in an Edinburgh girls school, is a lot like two world figures she admits to admiring: Mussolini and Hitler. While being arbitrary and authoritarian herself, she exhibits contempt for all legitimate authority. While claiming to educate her students in the true sense of the word (i.e., to draw them out), she constantly labels and confines them by her preconceptions of what she believes their destinies to be. She also manipulates their trust, inappropriately shares adult information with them, and constantly tests their loyalty.