There is a scene in the movie where the girls rush to find Madeline's hat before she goes to the hospital. It wasn't cold outside & they picked a summer hat (a straw hat) to toss to Ms. Clevel. What good will that do, block the sun out of Madeline's eyes in the hospital? LOL.
shareFrom a purely cinematic perspective, I agree: why a wide-brimmed summer hat?
But, when you consider that so much of the movie was derived from all those books, and you think about it that way: when did any of the girls in two straight lines ever go outside without their wide-brimmed, red-ribboned hats?
So, I think it was much more for the sake of continuity with the goings on in the books that they made such a fuss about the hat.
But, would it be all that unexpected? She was going to be getting out of the hospital some day (in children's stories, the heroine never dies), so she was going to need some street clothes to wear home, so they were taking her those clothes, and all that was missing at the moment that they were about to leave, was the hat... the hat, which in so many of the books, is what led the young heroine to, oh, so many of her adventures, being blown of by the wind, her chasing it, her meeting new people, and seeing new things.
The hat is almost as much a part of Madeline's character as her curiosity.
So, of course, it makes sense that they would make such a big fuss about making sure she had it when she left the hospital.
How else was she supposed to get an excuse to meet Pepito without all the other girls being right there with her?
Also in this film, Madeline gives away her hat when she runs away. The hat seems to have some kind of symbolism for belonging to the school, just like their uniforms.
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