Goodbye Mr Chips (1939)

Bank holidays in Britain are famous for several things. Atrocious weather is one of them, and it is typical that the films scheduled for broadcast fall into the category of family favourites.

This recent Monday May bank holiday has been exceptional as far as the weather has been concerned. And I was fortunate to catch an early morning film, one which I almost certainly have seen before, but which this particular viewing somewhat astonished me for its capacity to evoke an emotional response.

Quite simply, I think it is the fact that we are in the centenary year of the commencement of the Great War.

The BBC has been remarkable at the range and number of extraordinary documentaries looking at different aspects of this important historical moment.

It is only a couple of years since the last of the surviving soldiers that fought in the trenches died. It is now only something that can be remembered through the recorded reminiscences of those that experienced life at the frontline, and there is an added poignancy to the relics of this period in our history, such as the medals and trench art that have survived to come down to us.

It is sobering to think that it will be shortly similarly the case for the Second World War, as those that served in this conflict age sufficiently so that they have become a tiny minority of the population.

And so perhaps it is possible for me to have seen this film before and for it to have changed its significance viewing it now, when so much seems present in our minds.

One of the most moving documentaries that I have recently viewed is a dramatisation of the 37 days leading up to the declaration of war in 1914, subsequent to the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand.

This has been an exceptionally well realised programme, that has essentially sen the whole of the complex political story from the viewpoint of a lowly clerk in one of the foreign office departments, giving an interesting perspective on the way in which Britain was at the centre of an extraordinary empire at the time of the events that led inextricably toward the chaos of the war to end all wars.

What I suppose I had forgotten was the way in which this particular film captured a sense of the world that was destroyed by that conflict, as it amounts to the story of an elderly master at an English boys school, who is invited to become the headmaster of his school as a consequence of the decimation of his peers and the younger masters, called up to fight for King and country.

The achievement of one man’s lifetime ambition is related in the context of his own personal story, including the loss of his wife and child during childbirth.

The sense of the history of the time suddenly becoming more relevant, makes it emotionally compelling in a way that I could not have appreciated at previous viewings.

And I have just discovered that the film was made in 1939, almost certainly during that period of impending war. Perhaps that it should have won five Oscars is a fitting tribute to its quality, and perhaps a deep wish that the lessons of the history that it contains should not be forgotten.