Goodbye, Mr. Chips

AN AGED TEACHER AND FORMER HEADMASTER OF A BOARDING SCHOOLRECALLS HIS CAREER AND HIS PERSONAL LIFE OVER THE DECADES.

One more terrific film from a terrific year for movies--1939, the year of Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, and Stagecoach, among others--Sam Wood's Goodbye Mr. Chips is a deeply stirring work starring Robert Donat as the old schoolmaster who looks back upon his life. Told mostly in flashbacks, the film wraps itself around a history of an older England as seen through the generations of boys who pass through Mr. Chips's classroom. Greer Garson is her usual classy, sexy-intelligent self as Donat's wife, their earlier courtship one of the film's highlights. Get out the Kleenex for this one. --Tom Keogh