Goodbye, Mr. Chips

Goodbye, Mr. Chips follows Charles Edward Chipping, a shy and awkward schoolmaster who arrives at Brookfield, a boys' boarding school in England, near the end of the nineteenth century. Ridiculed at first by his pupils, he gradually earns their affection through his sincerity and devotion to teaching, becoming known to generations of boys as Mr. Chips. His life changes when he meets Katherine, whose warmth draws him out of his reserve. Over the decades that follow, his career at Brookfield spans the First World War and the social upheaval of the years after it.

The film is directed by Sam Wood, whose earlier work includes the Marx Brothers comedies A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races; it was released the same year as his adaptation of Gone with the Wind. The screenplay was written by Claudine West, R.C. Sherriff and Eric Maschwitz, and Victor Saville produced. Robert Donat plays Chipping, with Greer Garson as Katherine, Terry Kilburn as successive members of the Colley family, John Mills as the young Peter Colley, Paul Henreid as Max Staefel and Judith Furse as Flora, among a credited cast of thirty-five. Produced on a budget of about one million dollars, it returned roughly three million worldwide. On IMDb it holds 7.9 from around 12,000 votes and on TMDB 7.4 from 142; the critics' rating of 7.6 from 21 reviews sits between the two audience scores.