‘“I found Miss Brodie’s grave, I put some flowers on it.” Said Eunice.’ The film does not give you an idea about what the girls are like once they leave the school whereas Muriel Spark completes the book with who the special pupils eventually grow to be, this seems to be one of the more powerful aspects of her novel compared to the film.
“What were the main influences of your schooldays, Sister Helena [Sandy]?”
Many minute visual details are added to the film in order to enhance the dramatic impact; the students sing hymns in assembly, the girls are silent when Miss Brodie enters the room, Mary has a speech impediment, the other teachers talk about the Brodie set in the staff room… Sandy and Jenny fabricate the love letter from Miss Brodie to Gordon in the library; it is later discovered in a book and handed to Miss Mackay who ineffectively attempts to use it as an excuse to discharge Miss Brodie. None of these events occur in the novel. Another additional scene in the film is that in which Sandy and Jenny dangle Mary from the banister to force her to inform them about what she had just witnessed Miss Brodie and Mr Lloyd doing in the classroom…
Miss Brodie comes across as very sensitive and vulnerable in the film. She tries to hide her weak inner identity by protecting herself with a hard outer shell, but by the end of the film Miss Brodie’s true character is unveiled. In Neame’s version she has lots of charisma although she is sometimes lost for words. Throughout the novel she is predominantly portrayed as being a very strong minded and determined character. Her attitude towards the girls is markedly similar in both the novel and the film although she shows more dislike towards Mary in the book. I quote,
“I never did like Mary…”
Teddy is expected to be charming, fun and appealing given the depiction given of him in the novel, but the film portrays him as being overly persistent, impulsive and impolite. Gordon is taller than his physical description in the book describes him to be, he is quiet and polite.
Mary, who in the film is developed with some of both Eunice’s and Monica’s characteristics, plays a central role. Her speech impediment makes her character comical and her gormless manner enhances this. When Mary dies in the train, everyone is devastated. Jenny, who takes Rose’s and Eunice’s roles as well as her own in Neame’s film, is the one now known to have instinct as well as her ability to do cartwheels. Monica’s character in the film is a blend of Jenny’s and her own from the novel. She is no longer a swot but is more humorous and friendly. She is recognised as a poet instead of a mathematician.
“ Monica Douglas was a prefect, famous mostly for mathematics…”
Sandy, remaining the central student character, has a very twisted personality. Sometimes she is portrayed with humour (for example, the scene in which she pretends to kiss someone), but generally, she comes across as being very sour and cold-hearted. The relationship she has with miss Brodie is somewhat confusing… although one comes to believe that Sandy hates her, the similarity between the two characters is very clear. This makes the viewer think that Sandy is possibly afraid of becoming the person that miss Brodie intends her to be or that she is worried of evolving even further into miss Brodie herself. I think that although Sandy looks down on miss Brodie and has no respect for her, she pities her and is the only Brodie girl who knows miss Brodie as the fragile person that she really is. In the novel, miss Brodie’s character is commonly acknowledged with hatred and Sandy’s with understanding and compassion. Whereas in the film the viewer is generally intended to think the opposite, loving miss Brodie and hating Sandy.
The film gives us a better picture of Edinburgh in the nineteen thirties and helps us to understand the social and historical context of the story although it does not specifically emphasise on these points. There are scenes in which miss Brodie and the girls are in the streets of Edinburgh. They show what the atmosphere was like at that time and place. The school itself gives a good impression of life in their environment, showing that religion and tradition were important factors; hymns are sung in assembly, there is an old picture of Marcia Blaine hung on a wall…
The sequence of events is not often changed although an example of this occurring is when the time of Mary’s death is earlier in the film than in the novel. In the film she dies when her classmates are still at school whereas they had all left Marcia Blaine by the time she loses her life in the original story.
Although Neame alters many aspects of the novel in his adaptation of ‘The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’, the message of the story remains clear in the film. In my opinion, his choice of ruling out some of the main characters was a good one. It allowed him to emphasise on each character more thoroughly, enhancing our opinions of each of them separately instead of us merely perceiving them as ‘the Brodie set’. In the novel some members of the group have very little spotlight but in the film all four of the girls play reasonably large parts. I personally prefer the film to the novel; this is because the book, though containing more description, is quite unclear. Whereas the film’s story line is more direct. The celluloid image allows a careful exploration of miss Jean Brodie’s character in relation to those around her, which is particularly appealing and sensitively portrayed.
