Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actress 1969

The Contenders:

Genevieve Bujold: Anne of the Thousand Days
Jean Simmons: The Happy Ending
Maggie Smith: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (winner)
Liza Minnelli: The Sterile Cuckoo
Jane Fonda: They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?

Schadenfreude

Film: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

I knew very little about The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie going in except that it starred the great Maggie Smith and that she won an Oscar for her performance. I’m predisposed to like Maggie Smith. Like many people, my knowledge of her modern work pretty much starts and ends with the Harry Potter movies, but seeing her work from half a century ago is enlightening in a lot of ways. Since she is playing a schoolteacher in this, there’s a bit of foreshadowing of Minerva McGonagall, which will almost certainly be the role for which she is eventually remembered.

Jean Brodie (Maggie Smith) teaches at the Marcia Blaine School for Girls in Edinburgh where she openly defies what is expected of her in her lessons. She teaches girls at the junior level (roughly 9-13 years old), attempting to instill in them what she feels is important. This includes an appreciation of art, music, and some of life’s finer things. This is in direct contrast to the school’s main purpose of imbuing the girls with facts and skills necessary to be a proper Scottish lady in the 1930s. While the girls are drilled elsewhere in sewing, physical education, and basic science, Miss Brodie instead tries to fill them with culture and romance.