I was wondering if anyone else thinks that Jean Brodie would have supported Hitler as well. She liked Mussolini, and supported Franco. Of course, Hitler supported both of them as well. Something I wondered when watching the film. I also wonder if after she was fired she went to Spain and fought or supported Franco. Or if she was just a hypocrite. Any ideas?
shareIn the book she certainly supports Hitler. I have it here in front of me but unfortunately I can't find the page. However she definitely says it in the book because I remember stopping while reading it and thinking "was it really that uncommon for some brits to support hitler at the time?". I was forced to conclude no.
shareCertainly in the novel, Miss Brodie describes Hitler and the Brown Shirts as more "reliable" than Mussolini and his Black Shirts . It underlines her fickleness, but also her need to find something to believe in.
However, in the early thirties, it was not uncommon for those outside Germany, Spain or Italy to look at these countries and see them as progressive and successful. Obviously, time would tell as far as that was concerned, but it is a difficulty with Brodie that we tend to judge her by the horrors of the fascist regimes which were not apparent a the time.
However she definitely says it in the book because I remember stopping while reading it and thinking "was it really that uncommon for some brits to support hitler at the time?". I was forced to conclude no.
Funny you mention the Daily Mail.
This article ran in the Mail several years ago (admittedly, the book that is referred to is primarily discussing the family on the continent, not in the UK, but notice Lord Mountbatten is mentioned):
Prince Philip has broken a 60-year public silence about his family's links with the Nazis.http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-379036/Prince-Philip-pictured- Nazi-funeral.html share
In a frank interview, he said they found Hitler's attempts to restore Germany's power and prestige 'attractive' and admitted they had 'inhibitions about the Jews'.
The revelations come in a book about German royalty kowtowing to the Nazis, which features photographs never published in the UK. They include one of Philip aged 16 at the 1937 funeral of his elder sister Cecile, flanked by relatives in SS and Brownshirt uniforms. One row back in the cortege in Darmstadt, western Germany, was his uncle, Lord Mountbatten, wearing a Royal Navy bicorn hat.
Another picture shows his youngest sister, Sophia, sitting opposite Hitler at the wedding of Hermann and Emmy Goering.
Explaining the attraction of the Nazis, 84-year-old Prince Philip told an American academic: "There was a great improvement in things like trains running on time and building. There was a sense of hope after the depressing chaos of the Weimar Republic.
Actually, the movie BEGAN in 1932, and ended in about 1938. In 1932, the British government was far more worried about Mussolini because he had the potential to disrupt or cut the British Empire's "Lifeline to the East" with the modern navy he was building. Little did they know that this fleet of modern, fast ships would end up being almost ineffective, even when faced with older, slower ships of the Royal Navy. Hitler wasn't even yet in power in 1932. However, by 1938, people with any sense at all were becoming very worried about him. Apparently, some of them were on the Board of Governors of Marcia Blaine, because they found the charge of teaching fascism to be serious enough to dismiss Miss Brodie, when nothing else in the past had been.
share"becoming very worried by 1938" - gripped by near-panic is more accurate!
shareUnderstand that the movie takes place in 1932, years before the inadequacies and atrocities of the nazis and facists became widely known. The nazis were just over ten years old as a party and Hitler doesn't become chancellor for another year or so and most of what was going on in these countries were still rumors. And of course, many people were misinformed, as always, and formed opinions without enough information. These radical movements while all actually old ideas, were still new applications in the post industrial revolution and many saw them as a way out of the old regimes and into a more modern and progressive future.
shareYou have to remember what Teddy says about Jean: that she doesn't understand politics,but idealizes the leaders...
"Life is full of censorship. I can't spit in your eye." - Katharine Hepburn
I just think that Jean was one of those strong teachers that live by their own rules. Any teacher like that naturally becomes the enemy of jealous co-workers. It was her co-workers that really did-her-in. The subject matter was second to her real purpose in the classroom....which was to teach "Her girls" about real life..........and how to live it......
share"I could never reconcile the fact that such an intelligent woman as Jean Brodie would be a fascist, though perhaps that's the whole point of the book and movie."
In the book at least, Brodie is not the most intelligent, but rather most able to affect an intellectual demeanor influential upon young aspirants to sophistication. I thought Spark rather disdained Brodie as a superficial character, while nonetheless depicting her considerable talents for manipulation.
That was what I got from the movie. I have met a lot of people in my life who have the words and demeanor of intellect, but don't seem to be able to THINK. The movie plays like a horror story. We know that she is filling these innocent minds with dangerous ideas, she is like the monsters who may not mean harm, but are still killing everyone. And finally, the brave girl stops her. It is an interesting movie, as long as you don't start thinking Jean Brodie is the hero.
shareI think one has to be careful about how we view the character of Jean Brodie from the analytical perspective of the 21st century, and with a full and objective understanding of the history of thirties Britain and Europe.
The novel isn't written in a complete, chronological order; we know early on that Jean Brodie has a flaw in her character in her misguided admiration and promotion of Mussolini, Franco and the emerging Nazi party, and that fatal feature, which leads her to recommend to one of the girls to go to Spain to fight on the side of the Nationalists, will be the flaw that leads to both her downfall and the ultimate rejection of the girls. The narrative in the novel also gives some enlightenment as to how her Calvinist influences have imbued in her the same concepts of pre-destination and unconditional election, which, in a far more corrupt sense, inform some of the racist policies of the Fascist/Nazi ideology. It must be remembered that in the thirties the political complexion in Britian was far more polarised than it is now, and, although the extremes that found mass favour across most European countires never reached such dynamic levels in Britain, the extreme far left and right political parties in Britain did have large affiliation throughout the class hierarchy. Disillusionment with the establishment failings that had led to the mass murder of trench warfare in the 1914-18 conflict had been the meat that nourished the need to consider new ideologies, especially in the defeated nations still experiencing the hardships of reparations. Consider also, that when the Nazis ultimately came to power, although the dangers were already feared in many quarters, they were viewed as a potent, legitimate political force; we were still a decade away from the liberation of Auschwitz, Belsen and Dachau.
It is interesting, however, that no reference is made to Jean Brodie's admiration of Hitler, although towards the end of the film those who know their history will know that Hitler is supporting militarily the execution of Franco's fascistic civil war in Spain, and that the axis of Fascist/Nazi states has come into force. Unfortunately, Germany, in the psyche of many Britons, is forever linked with the Nazi regime; inversely, Italy, which predated the Germans with their own form of far right regime, escapes the same sweeping brush. With her love of Italy and direct mention of Il Duce, we're prepared to suspend our judgement of her and not resist understanding her motives and character, however flawed. As a reviewer once said, we know she's intellectual, but it's by the end of the film that we realise she's deranged as well. It is Lloyd, the art teacher with whom she has harboured a torch for for years, who finally rejects her, telling her that her lack of love and repressive life has led her to support what he refers to as "stupid, dangerous politics". This scene, which is not in the book, does seem to rather spoon feed the "correct" sentiments to the audience. In the novel Lloyd rejects her only in so far as he agrees with the main character from the Brodie set, Sandy, in that, in their final assessment, she is ridiculous. The film softens her political fancies; in the novel her newly acquired admiration for Hitler and his brown shirts is recorded in the final pages as we see her final betrayal and downfall, which has been intimated throughout the narrative. The judgements as to the failings and flaws in the Brodie character are left to the reader's morality. To use the old cliched metaphor, it's the final nail in her coffin.
We may not end up liking her, but it is her faults that make for one of the most compelling characters in literature and film.
Very well said. Neither my sister nor I had seen this movie before (despite our advanced ages), so we dvr'd it when TCM aired it a week or so ago. My sister was able to watch it before me, and when we discussed it afterward, she asked me what I thought of Jean, and I basically said she was a whackjob. She sighed in relief. She was so afraid I'd like her!
I didn't hate Jean, but she was shallow and conventional at heart. Which character was it that said that Jean didn't hate Miss McKay, but that she wanted to be Miss McKay? I think that says it all.
She believed what.she wanted to believe. Human nature.
shareI take it you are not British,or know very much about British history between 1918-1939?
Unlike most European countries Britain had little problems with extreme political movements in the 1920s and 1930s.
Italy and Germany,Spain and Portugal were fascist,France had great dramas with fascist and communists clashes.
In Britain the British Union Of Fascists,BUF and the Communists party attracted less than 50,000 members at their peaks of influence.
Hitler,Stalin and Mussolini all sponsored extreme groups in Britain and all gave up when they saw that the groups were getting nowhere.
Britain had mass unemployment for years and great poverty in particular areas of the country but there was little threat of democracy ending.
What do you mean Britain was not as democratic as some places?by 1929 all women and men had the vote,martial law was never introduced and no governments ruled by decree.
A minority might have felt democracy let them down but they were a small minority.
Actually, I am a born and bred Londoner. Let me reiterate my post. Political feeling was far more polarised than it is now. A generation, those lucky enough to have survived the slaughter of the trenches on the 1914-18 war, came back to a Britain that hadn't had the political upheavals that the Romamov, Hapsburg and the Ottoman empires had gone through. The English establishment hadn't changed much, certainly the structures where still in place. There was great disenchantment, which was vastly increased by the depression years, which did point some people towards Communist/Fascistic pursuasions. Certainly the numbers affiliating themselves with one or other political party in Britain were far, far smaller than continental Europe - we've always been fairly apolitical compared to Europe, and, it often seems, the US - but that groundswell was still no less significant. This did not present itself, it's true, in partisan affiliation, but more in a spirit of revoutionary activity to encourage change rather than enforce it through bloody revolution. Democracy was never seriously challenged, but a threat of change, largely from external sources encouraged by a biased view of internal strife, still lingered. Recall how the workers' unions gained a lot of political clout from its swelling numbers leading up to the outbreak of war in 1939. It is not common knowledge that the munitions workers went on strike for better pay and conditions in 1941 at the height of the conflict. Consider also the numbers of young men who joined the International Brigades that went to fight the Republican cause in Spain against the German Nazi-backed Franco regime. Oswald Mosley, although he never gained the massed support that the fascist parties enjoyed across Europe, was still a thorn in the side of the pre-war government, not least because he had more covert support amongst the establishment than history has cared to remember. The battle of Cable Street attests to the fear that existed amongst Jews, left-wingers and moderates in Britain at the time. The extremists never gained a footing in which they could become a real palpable threat, but the fear of this happening when reflected against events happening across the Channel gave the extremists a significance that they probably didn't deserve, certainly, with hindsight, from the point of view of public support at the time, but, as is still the case, political extremism starts with a small band of angry, disillusioned fanatics, and is ignored at all our peril. Einstein said, when people start burning books, they soon start burning people. What also generated a sense of threat was the speed at which the political landscape in Europe had changed so drastically, and, because any dissent was then ruthlessly eliminated, that change only through war seemed inevitable.
The point of Jean Brodie's support of Fascism suggests that she is potentially unhinged, which was the main thrust of my blog. It is precisely because of her support for the Fascists and her expressions of daft admiration - they have order, they are smart, they are proud - that the reader and film viewer realise there is a deep flaw in her character, something that may result in some contributary factor in her downfall. The book mentions her admiration of Hitler, which the film does not. However, the film doesn't make the assumption that its audience is astute enough to understand the subtleties of her character, and has Lloyd, the art teacher she has always carried a torch for, tell her that she has always had some loopy ideas. My blog was simply trying to make this context clear.
I believe it is easier to look back now and think (even when the movie came out in 1969) that it would be deplorable to admire anything about Hitler, who is judged today (rightly so, I would think) to be a genocidal monster. However, by 1932 and the years prior to the war, Hitler and his government could be admired because (despite their despicable racial policies, in 1932 those weren't as visible as they were to become throughout the next 13-years) of the rapid economic turn-around Germany had endured. While the depression still raged in the UK, France, and the USA, Germany was well on the road to recovery. Hitler even managed to fool the entire world, in 1936 (still four years after the story is set) with the Berlin Olympics. If he were seen as a mass-murderer in 1932, I doubt the world would have come to Germany for the Olympics.
The big flaws to the economic policies Hitler (and Mussolini and Franco, to certain degrees) put into place to result in Germany's resurgence were that they all led to militarization and war. I am an American, and here in school when the Great Depression is taught there seems to almost be confusion to how it ended. Some seem to believe that it was the New Deal and the new social policies created by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. However, most understand that it was war (and the US industry started preparing for such steps closer to 1940, and prior to full US involvement after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in late 1941...US troops only got involved in 1942) that turned the economy around. Adolf Hitler and his brain trust realized this as well, and began rebuilding the military as soon as they could. Instead of reeling from the horrors of WWI like the victors (France and Great Britain) were, Hitler convinced Germany that the German army had never rightly been defeated, but had instead been cheated (stabbed in the back, as the propaganda pointed out) out of victory at home by politicians (leftists politicians, and so Communists and Jews, the Nazis believed) who sought to end the war.
It should have been partially obvious by 1934 (with the very visible Nazi Congress at Nuremberg, documented by Leni Riefenstahl in Triumph of the Will) that Germany was flouting the Treaty of Versailles by rebuilding its military so quickly and efficiently. The biggest problem (one not seen by those who admired Germany's quick recovery, among whom were prominent Americans such as Joseph P. Kennedy, father of President John F. Kennedy) was that such a military buildup as the one that took place in Germany prior to 1939 could really only lead to war. The primary purpose of an army is war, and Hitler was making promises to the German people (and to his generals and high-ranking officials) that war was coming. The fact also remains that if an economy is built up based on the promise of war, and if that war must happen, then there is the possibility of military defeat. The aspirations of Hitler and the Nazis were not just to defeat Poland (or even Poland, France, and the UK) but to also defeat and take over the Soviet Union (I don't know, despite all the reading I have done, what his plans regarding the USA would have been, had all the goals of the Nazis in Europe and Africa come to fruition).
I apologize for ranting on for too long, but I would just have to reiterate that my main point is that in the early 1930's it was not unique to have respect for Hitler and the Nazis, because while most of the world was suffering greatly from the Great Depression, and many regimes and governments were falling apart (although, as has been said, neither Great Britain nor the USA had any change in government), Germany had fully rebounded from the crushing economic hardships they had faced after World War I. Hitler and the Nazis were seen in many circles as the catalyst for the economic growth and recovery of Germany. Today also, a comparable thing might be admired (though due to lessons learned from World War II, if indeed they HAVE been learned, the world community might be more cautious) if a nation-state that was racked with poverty and hunger, and had a large population (I have trouble trying to think of a comparable example in the present day-world...maybe Sudan would be a candidate, or perhaps even Iran as they are currently headed) suddenly turned its fortunes around and wound up with minimal poverty, an army that was considered among the best in the world, and an entire national populace seemingly with the same goals and hopes, the reasons for that turn-around (if not OBVIOUSLY bad) would probably be respected, too.
Sorry again for the rant...I hope, if anyone reads this far, that it makes sense and isn't a total waste of time.
"Well if you wanted to make Syrok the Preparer cry...mission accomplished."
I hardly think you can call your blog a rant. It was an articulate and well-informed response. You make a couple of interesting points that recall something an old teacher of mine told me some years ago. He spent many years teaching in Germany during the 60s. Hundreds of thousands of German/Austrians used to attend the Hitler rallies, and yet one never found a German who would have been of that generation and would admit to having been there or even supporting the Nazies, even from a non-Party membership position. Until, that is, he got drunk one night with a German teacher who admitted he'd been at the rallies. He'd saluted, and worn the swastika - and, I dare say, had been a card carrying member of the National Socialist Party. And he'd told my old teacher that Hitler had given them back their pride, the sense of nationhood and strength, and they had bread in their stomachs. And this bread didn't just mean food, it was a metaphor for economic stability and every aspect that that meant to a collective people. ( Interestingly enough, the Anglo-Americans knew they could win over the people of Berlin during the Berlin airlifts after WWII by dropping food, staples like bread and coffee, and even cigarettes, rather than political leaflets as the Soviets attempted. ) This man told my teacher that they gave little if any thought to the consequences of the anti-semitic policies; no one could have foreseen Belsen, Dachau and Auschwitz, the millions who would be herded into concentration or death camps. I think it is this that makes the dangers of extremist political views particularly worrying - they start off under a blanket, false as it may be, of genuine, innocuous alternative politics - no different from Hitler. The failures of the Weimar Republic, of disillusionment, particularly amongst a verile and young population, are dangers that never go away. The link between armies, legitimate ones, and membership of modern European neo-Nazi groups, and indeed terrorist movements of any complexion from IRA, ETA, Barder-Meinhof through to Al Queda, is young men aged in the broad region between 15 to 30-something.
The examples you give for the socio-economic success of the US I agree with. I think, however, that America's economic status benefitted, as well as other complex contributary factors, from both the New Deal and from the fact that it emerged from WWII almost twice as rich as it was at its entry after the attack of Pearl Harbor. It's interesting that Britain has been paying off remunerations to the US since 1945 for the military hardware and support we received, payments that were only finalised in 2006.
If your blog was a rant, well, this was mine !!!
Both of your posts date from 2007, so I don't know if anyone will read this, but I find it extremely interesting that nobody had noticed that although everyone agrees that the film is set in 1932, the Spanish Civil War took place between 1936 and 1939. This means that the movie is anachronistic, because Franco had almost no political relevance (only that of a General posted in North Africa) until the war started.
shareHi tereta111,
As a lover of film, I visit IMDb at least a couple of times per week. And occasionally I find that someone's answered a blog I've written !
You're correct in saying that the film starts in the early thirties - I'm not sure if it's exactly 1932 - but the film covers the formative years of the Brodie Set, from the ages of about 13 to 16/17, so the rise of Fascism/Nazism in all its forms was very real at this period. The Spanish Civil War was indeed between 1936 and 1939, but we hear that one of the girls has absconded to fight in the campaign and has met an untimely and violent end, so we see that the years have passed against historical events.
As well as the slow disintergration of Jean Brodie, the film is also about the angst and enlightenment of growing up for the girls. They go from pure admiration for Miss Brodie, almost to the point of that first, girlish, possibly homo-erotic crush on an influencing figure, to the more mature realisation that some earlier teachings turn out to be cut from the false-prophet cloth, even, as in Jean Brodie's case, to the point of discovering that our immature, naive faith can sometimes be placed in those whose views turn out to be a little loopy at best to downright dangerous at worst.
As the film ends, we know that one of the girls at least is leaving with a level, intelligent head on her shoulders, a quality that'll be needed as the world is about to be plunged into the Second World War.
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I believe it is easier to look back now and think (even when the movie came out in 1969) that it would be deplorable to admire anything about Hitler, who is judged today (rightly so, I would think) to be a genocidal monster. However, by 1932 and the years prior to the war, Hitler and his government could be admired because (despite their despicable racial policies, in 1932 those weren't as visible as they were to become throughout the next 13-years) of the rapid economic turn-around Germany had endured. While the depression still raged in the UK, France, and the USA, Germany was well on the road to recovery. Hitler even managed to fool the entire world, in 1936 (still four years after the story is set) with the Berlin Olympics. If he were seen as a mass-murderer in 1932, I doubt the world would have come to Germany for the Olympics.
In the 1930s there were many people in the free world who admired Mussolini but didn't like Hitler. This was because there was still quite a bit of general antagonism against the Germans left over from the First World War. It was also felt with justification that Hitler was steering Europe into another war.
shareIn the movie MALENA, the Sicilians love of Mussolini but dislike of Hitler
is expressed. In the end, they show their disenchantment with Mussolini
for "selling them down the river" to the Germans.
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Perhaps she is not seen in the film to support Hitler because the higher-ups at 20th Century Fox thought that it would be inappropriate for their protagonist to be a Hitler supporter, or that it would cause the film to be poorly received.
I blanched at the fact that she supported Mussolini and Franco, but I think it's probable that US audiences wouldn't have the profound knee-jerk reaction to those two, than to the 20th century symbol for all things evil, Adolf Hitler.
And those who come for the first time across this film today? I doubt many even know who Mussolini and Franco were.
That the studio was worried about how support for Hitler would play may very well be the case.
I just watched the film for the first time and for the most part found Brodie to be a very sympathetic character. Her main, and highly disturbing, flaw, from the perspective of someone looking back on that period, was her support for fascists. Somehow I was expecting her character to be supportive of the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, not of Franco. But as noted upthread, you have to remember what Teddy says about Jean: that she doesn't understand politics, but idealizes the leaders...
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