Maggie Smith

 

Dame Maggie Smith's only leading role Oscar was for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), in which she played the title character, a teacher in a Scottish girls' school.

While reflecting on the picture last night, using a contemporary-culture lens, I began to see the auburn-haired Brodie as something other than a lonely spinster who toyed with men's affections while captivating her young charges with her spirited rejection of convention and mores, hiding her sadness behind bravado and shallow charm.

As I listened more intently to all of those wonderful words coming out of Dame Maggie's mouth, it occurred to me that this marvelous character (based on the Muriel Sparks novel and given cinematic life by screenwriter Jay Presson Allen) was a thoroughgoing narcissist, enamored of her own irrepressibility and unwilling to bend favorably toward anyone who would not feed her egoism.

What a rich, layered performance by Dame Maggie, whose clipped aristocratic warble was a terrific invention in itself! I studied more closely her affect when finally confronting her demons, as they were shown to her by a student (Pamela Franklin) who had grown tired of Miss Brodie's manipulation and emotional indifference.

That last-reel lashing of the teacher, despondent to learn she was no longer in her "prime," is a comeuppance for the ages, which, nonetheless, might leave some in the audience pitying the teacher, who was, yes, an arrogant, cagey, Fascist sympathizer who claimed no responsibility for the lives she'd ruined. But she was also quite mad and should not have been in a position of authority.

Miss Brodie was ejected from her position by the head mistress (Celia Johnson) based on reports of misbehavior and grooming of her "girls" to be radical nonconformists, but she would not accept the board's decision. Rather she would appeal to the public, arguing that she was well-known and popular, and her students would defend her.

Of course, all of that was a facade, and Miss Brodie eventually folded, having been unmasked by someone she had trusted, simply because that person reflected the teacher's treachery back at her.