Plot
Jean Brodie is a teacher at an all-girls school called Marcia Blaine in Edinburgh, Scotland, in the 1930s. Brodie is known for her tendency to stray from the school's curriculum, to romanticize fascist leaders like Benito Mussolini and Francisco Franco, and to believe herself to be in the prime of life - in particular, her sexual prime. Brodie devotes her energy and attention to girls she sees as special or mouldable, who are referred to as the "Brodie Set". At the film's outset, the Brodie Set is composed of four 12-year-old junior school girls: Sandy, Monica, Jenny, and Mary.
The Brodie Set often go to art museums, theatre, and have picnics on the school lawn, to the chagrin of the school's austere headmistress Emmelina Mackay, who dislikes that the girls are cultured to the exclusion of hard knowledge, and seem precocious for their age. She has a grudge against Brodie, who has tenure and was hired six years before Mackay became headmistress. Brodie boasts to her girls that the only way she will stop teaching at Marcia Blaine is if she is assassinated.
Brodie catches the eye of the school's music teacher and choirmaster Gordon Lowther, with whom she and the girls spend weekends at his luxurious estate in Cramond. Brodie sometimes spends the night with Lowther, although she tries to conceal this from the girls. Lowther wishes to marry Brodie, but she still has feelings for the school's art teacher Teddy Lloyd, an ex-lover of Brodie's who steadily pursues her.
As the Brodie Set grow older and progress closer to the Senior School, they frequent Teddy Lloyd's studio, where he paints Jenny's portrait. Sandy initially rebuffs a lecherous advance from Lloyd. However, when Brodie tries to manoeuvre Jenny and Lloyd into an affair, and Sandy into spying on them, it is Sandy, resentful of Brodie's constant praise of Jenny's beauty, who becomes Teddy's lover and muse. Sandy ends the affair because of Lloyd's continuing obsession with Brodie.
Mary, influenced by Brodie, leaves the school to join her brother, whom she believes to be fighting for Franco in the Spanish Civil War. She is killed shortly after crossing the frontier when the train she is on is attacked, which incites Sandy to inform the headmistress of Brodie's efforts to impose her politics on her students. The disclosure finally leads to Brodie's termination, her humiliation compounded by Mr. Lowther's engagement to another teacher.
Before Brodie's departure, Sandy confronts her about her manipulation of Mary, Mary's senseless death, and the harmful influence she exerted on other girls, adding that Mary's brother is actually fighting for the Spanish Republicans. Brodie responds with a series of harsh but astute comments about Sandy's character, particularly her ability to coldly judge and destroy others. Sandy retorts that Brodie professed to be an admirer of conquerors and walks out of the classroom, Brodie runs after her and screams down the hallway, "Assassin!"
Sandy, Monica, and Jenny graduate and leave the school. As Sandy departs, her face streaked with tears, Brodie's voice is heard proclaiming her oft-repeated motto: "Little girls, I am in the business of putting old heads on young shoulders, and all my pupils are the crème de la crème. Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life."
Relationship to novel and play
There is a complex relationship between the novel, play, film and television series. Jay Presson Allen wrote the stage and screen plays, and was involved with the STV series.
The play, movie and TV series focus on Miss Brodie. But the novel focuses on Sister Helen of the Transfiguration. It opens with the former Sandy Stranger being interviewed about the book she has just published that has electrified the literary community. What were the influences in her life that enabled her to write such a great work on theology? Was it Calvin? Someone else? The novel then reviews Sandy/Sister Helena's life, as if it passes before her mind's eye in the time it takes to formulate an answer to the journalist's question. We finish in the present tense of Sister Helena's interview, as she identifies the key influence of her life by saying, "There was a Miss Jean Brodie - in her prime."
Allen created a successful play out of a novel that was challenging to adapt, first, because it is very short, but mainly because the novel is very introspective and internally-focused - making it excellent for the silent reader but difficult to externalise in production media like theatre, film and television. Vanessa Redgrave triumphed in the lead role in London, as did Zoe Caldwell in New York. Vincent Canby, reviewing the film in the New York Times, wrote "Jay Presson Allen...created a much better play than is generally recognized. Roles like that of Miss Jean Brodie don't often write themselves" (3 March 1969). However, some critics have questioned whether the play is a particularly faithful adaptation. They have suggested that it turned an experimental work into a realistic one and removed some theological issues, turning the final product into a story of failed love [4] (and possibly also failed fascist politics).
The play reduced the number of girls in the Brodie Set from six to four (and discarded another girl not in the set), and some of them are composites of girls in the novel. Mary is a composite of the original Mary and Joyce Emily; although mainly based on the original Mary, it was Joyce Emily in the novel who died in the Spanish Civil War (Mary later dies in a fire), and rather more is made of this incident in the play than in the novel. Jenny is a composite of the original Jenny and Rose; in spite of her name she has more in common with Rose who, in the novel, Miss Brodie tried to maneuver into having an affair with Mr Lloyd.
The novel made extensive use of flash forward. The play largely dropped this device, but it includes a few scenes showing Sandy as a nun in later life. The film, which made a few changes from the play, discarded these scenes in favor of a linear narrative.
