Disappointed

No, I disagree. You are quite right that the songs don’t do the story justice (although over the years, I’ve come to like some of them). Leslie Bricusse is not Sondheim or Lerner and Loewe. But even with the songs, there is an innovation the director employs (more below) which makes them more than serviceable. I will go even further to say that the screenplay is particularly bad and here, there WAS talent at work: Terence Rattigan (author of SEPARATE TABLES, BREAKING THE SOUND BARRIER, etc.), wrote a sketchy script that misses a lot of dramatic possibilities. The crises that ends the first half of the film is contrived. Most of the second half is so poorly fleshed out that you have to wonder if he walked off the project.

But if you can get past those two (admittedly serious) drawbacks, there is a great deal to like, and certainly a full range of emotion. Peter O’Toole’s performance in many ways surpasses Robert Donat’s. (I am prepared for people to take me to task for that comment, but there it is.) O’Toole is subtle and affecting. You believe him when he says, “all I ever wanted to be was a schoolmaster.” The scene at Assembly, near the end of the film, as he puts his life into perspective, always brings me to tears. He was nominated for Best Actor and I have to keep reminding myself who could have possibly won instead (John Wayne in TRUE GRIT). Petula Clark is good, given what she has to work with. But her part is not well written. The photography is stunning – filled with rich colors and intricate camerawork. The scoring (John Williams) makes the songs sound almost sophisticated. Williams also fashions forgettable melodies into soaring passages of background music.

This was Herbert Ross’s first film as director and I think there are times when too much is happening – touches to show how much he can do technically (the helicopter shot at Pompeii, for example). But he had to do something to compensate for the songs and script. Far more notably, he created a way of presenting musical numbers that had never been done in film before: instead of characters singing songs directly to the camera/audience as ballads, they are sung off-screen, behind footage that explains what the characters are thinking (WHERE DID MY CHILDHOOD GO, AND THE SKY SMILED, WHEN I AM OLDER, and WHAT A LOT OF FLOWERS). Looking back now, it is amazing to realize no other musical had ever done this before.

Could this film have been better? Sure. But there is an emotional core that rescues it from being a disappointment.

I concur. An overlong, often dull film with a fatal lack of emotion and forgettable songs. The love story was rushed and Clarke was in over her head. Even Siân Phillips described the film as 'so-so'.

I like the romantic story in Mr. Chips. I have seen only part, about half, I think of the 1939 dramatic version and I much preferred the half that I saw to this. I generally hate musicals. There are only a few that I have enjoyed and even then they work better on stage. So, I am decidedly biased.

I like the script and the actors in the 1969 version. If they would only let that infamous Korean theater owner who chopped all of the songs out of "The Sound of Music," he could make of this a great film.

The best diplomat I know is a fully charged phaser bank.