That's when we usually leave a message on that Facebook post along the lines of...."nothing wrong with this place a well aimed Tomahawk missile couldn't cure...". You will never hear us waxing nostalgic about our Junior High School......a stinkhole rampant with bullying and the worst, creepiest collection of teachers equaled only by the ballet school staff in "Suspiria"......
These monotone drones with delusions of adequacy mostly sat at their desks reciting textbook passages aloud.......not so much to illuminate the students, but more to keep themselves awake until their weekly paychecks cleared......
Let's put it this way.......nobody in our junior high would stand up, as in "Dead Poets Society" and shout out 'Oh Captain, My Captain!' to any of these soulless lumps passing themselves off as educators.....
Which brings us to "Good Morning Miss Dove", 20th Century Fox's aggressively schmaltzy entry in that time-tested genre, the Inspirational Teacher Who Dedicates His/Her Life To Decades Of Students At The Cost Of His/Her Own Personal Life.......
This genre never ages and you can bet the studios will always return to it, reconfigured for a new generation.......but the lumbering, static "Miss Dove" is like a woolly Mammoth trapped in a glacier, frozen in both technique and execution by the rigidity of its typically 1950's Fox moviemaking.....
Assigned to the studio's stalwart house director, Henry Koster, the film was naturally shot in Fox's spankin' new ultra-wide Cinemascope.......(with a 2:55 aspect ratio....for you non-techies like me, it's frickin' wide.......unless you're watching it on a big-ass flatscreen, it's like peeking at the movie through venetian blinds.....). 1950's movie directors at first didn't know what to do with Cinemascope.......except treat it like a theater proscenium arch and position their actors in a row in front of the camera, as if they're about to take a curtain call.
Koster, having directed "The Robe", the very first Cinemascope movie, shot almost all of "Miss Dove" in medium shots, allowing himself few close-ups. This may have worked for the pageantry and spectacle of "The Robe", but it's a deadly visual style for a drama that's sweating so profusely to pull on your heartstrings......
Before we go on.......we want to loudly state that we adore Jennifer Jones.......she and Gene Tierney are hands down our two favorite classic Movie Goddesses........but poor Jen,as the title character, spends almost all of this movie trapped in 1950's Hollywood old age makeup (which consists of dusting baby powder into her bunned-up hair)......she looks like Norman Bates' mom before she started decomposing.....
Even worse, the script and Koster's direction sentences her to play elementary school teacher Miss Dove as a monotone-voiced, repressed sourpuss, spewing out scolding criticism to both children and adults who cross her path. The movie never attempts to dig deeper into the stern, stoic nature of Miss Dove's character, other than the flashback to her youth, in which she rejects her one and only suitor to pursue a teaching career......in order to pay off the cash embezzled by her Bank president father.
You just have to take it on faith that Miss Dove's decades of tough love (including, we kid you not, a punishment stool for kids with poor posture) have made her a beloved figure in the picture-postcard backlot small town she lives in.......
This may sound like a no brainer.....but Inspirational Teacher movies require.......an Inspirational Teacher.....otherwise forget it. Jennifer Jones' Miss Dove, about as inspiring as a traffic light, glumly anchored to her chair reading out of textbooks, instantly reminded us of those worthless Junior High teachers we mentioned at the beginning of this post.
And not in this universe or anywhere else does anyone ever recall such a teacher with the glowing warmth and sentiment that Miss Dove's former students lavish upon her. In the real world, if you give those kinds of teachers any thought at all.......it's to cheer yourself up by thinking they must be dead and buried by now.....
But in order to swallow the populace's great love for Miss Dove, you'll need about the same amount of unbending faith as the oppressed Christians in "The Robe".......but we'll admit to loving the film's signature opening sequence......Miss Dove, paralyzed by a tumor at the base of her spine, carried to the hospital by her pastor and doctor......like Cleopatra entering Rome.....
We know many folks might fondly remember this movie.....but sorry, we know a great teacher when we were lucky enough to encounter one, (we did have a few in High School...)......and Miss Dove simply isn't one of them......even if we grade her on a curve. 2 stars (**).....and only that many for the presence of our dear, dear Miss Jones.....
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