Goodbye, Mr. Chips

"He is a shy schoolmaster. She is a music hall star. They marry and immediately have 283 children...all boys!"

1969 2h 35m EN

👍

6.8

SOLID

★6.8TMDB · 54

DramaMusicRomance

Synopsis

Spoiler shield

Academy Award-honoree Peter O'Toole stars in this musical classic about a prim English schoolmaster who learns to show his compassion through the help of an outgoing showgirl. O'Toole, who received his fourth Oscar-nomination for this performance, is joined by '60s pop star Petula Clark and fellow Oscar-nominee Michael Redgrave.

“He is a shy schoolmaster. She is a music hall star. They marry and immediately have 283 children...all boys!”

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Cast

Peter O'Toole
Arthur Chipping
Petula Clark
Katherine Bridges
Michael Redgrave
The Headmaster
George Baker
Lord Sutterwick
Siân Phillips
Ursula Mossbank
Michael Bryant
Max Staefel
Jack Hedley
William Baxter
Alison Leggatt
Headmaster's Wife

Credits

Behind the camera

Director: Herbert Ross
Writers: Terence Rattigan
Languages: English
Countries: United Kingdom

Want more? Switch to Cinephile mode in the header for DP, composer, budget, box office, production companies, keywords, and release history.

Did you know?

Fun facts 🍿

1 / 8

RUNTIME

Did you know

Clocks in at 155 minutes — on the longer side of feature-length cinema.

MoodPlayr · trivia#01

2 / 8

ERA

Did you know

57 years old — a genuine piece of film history.

MoodPlayr · trivia#02

3 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Directed by Herbert Ross, shot by Oswald Morris. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.

MoodPlayr · trivia#03

4 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Original score by John Williams. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.

MoodPlayr · trivia#04

5 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Editor Ralph Kemplen shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.

MoodPlayr · trivia#05

6 / 8

CAST

Did you know

Peter O'Toole and Petula Clark and Michael Redgrave carry the top of the cast.

MoodPlayr · trivia#06

7 / 8

CAST

Did you know

Marketing tagline: "He is a shy schoolmaster. She is a music hall star. They marry and immediately have 283 children...all boys!".

MoodPlayr · trivia#07

8 / 8

WILD

Did you know

IMDB entry: tt0064382 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.

MoodPlayr · trivia#08

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Herbert Ross directs. Oswald Morris behind the camera. John Williams scores. Ralph Kemplen cuts. Produced in United Kingdom. Dialogue in English.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

1Clocks in at 155 minutes — on the longer side of feature-length cinema.
257 years old — a genuine piece of film history.
3Directed by Herbert Ross, shot by Oswald Morris. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
4Original score by John Williams. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
5Editor Ralph Kemplen shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
6Peter O'Toole and Petula Clark and Michael Redgrave carry the top of the cast.
7Marketing tagline: "He is a shy schoolmaster. She is a music hall star. They marry and immediately have 283 children...all boys!".
8IMDB entry: tt0064382 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.
9Only 54 TMDB ratings — you're getting ahead of the curve on this one.
10Classified under 14 themes, including "based on novel or book", "boarding school", "world war ii", "forbidden love".

The technical file

Cinematography: Oswald Morris
Original score: John Williams
Editing: Ralph Kemplen
Production design: Ken Adam
Costume design: Julie Harris
Makeup / hair: Colin Jamison
Runtime: 155 min · 2h 35m
Status: Released
Budget: $9,000,000
Original language: EN
Certification (US): G
IMDB: Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969)

Awards

National Board of Review: Top Ten Films

Individual records documented via Wikidata; the summary above may count more.

Also by

Herbert Ross

Trailers & featurettes

Watch the pieces

Community reviews

What people are saying

CinemaSerf2025-03-23
★ 7/10
I suppose if you are going to reimagine the classic 1939 version of this story, you have to ditch some of that film’s most charming elements and bring it up to date. That’s what Herbert Ross and Leslie Bricusse have done here and for the most part it sort of works. Peter O’Toole takes on the role of the fastidious Latin master at the all-boys “Brookfield” school where he is neither much liked by the staff nor much respected by the pupils. It’s on a trip to London to see a show that he meets it’s star “Katherine” (Petula Clark) but he puts his foot in his mouth rather. On a trip to Pompeii, he encounters her again and this time the seeds of something special are planted. Their return to his school exposes both of them to changing attitudes towards himself and her that tests their blossoming relationship and his professional commitment to something he’d hitherto given his life to and with the Second World war now also looming, there are significant readjustments required to attitudes at the school that will see the final demise of the more traditional class system and the end of an era that, following a wartime tragedy, leaves “Chips” adrift in a world with which he is unfamiliar. It’s a well produced drama with plenty of attention to the detail, but it has lost much of the blue Danube romance of the Robert Donat and Greer Garson version. The “Katherine” character here is much more robust, independent and doubtless a better fit for the late 1960s, but for me the modernisation rendered this a bit disappointingly functional. I also found it lacked a killer musical number as neither “Fill the World with Love” nor “You and I” really stick in the mind for long after their various reprises throughout the film. Maybe I’m a sucker for the original sentiment, but though I enjoyed this enough, it is not a film that tugs at the heartstrings the same way nor does it evoke that sense of declining empire and relevance that added such poignancy before. There is an engaging chemistry, though, between O’Toole and Clark - she certainly knows how to hold a note and it’s a competent reversioning that’s hard not to like.

Production companies