Good Morning, Miss Dove

The treacle and sentimentality is heavy with this one. Good Morning, Miss Dove is a film that whips itself into crocodile tears and pours syrup over every frame in its story of a spinster teacher finding herself as a town’s beloved member. There’s curious case of unknown emphasis here, as though Miss Dove at once wants to be about the teacher, various made-good pupils, and her current flock of charges.

I admit to consistently being unmoved by these hagiographies of “inspirational” teachers, and most especially one as scrubbed and antiseptic as Good Morning, Miss Dove with its depiction of small town life where everyone knows your business as some kind of picturesque and aspirational view of the world. I don’t buy it for a second, especially with a stiff-backed and frosty teacher like Miss Dove.

There’s nothing asked of Jennifer Jones here but to lie down, speak in a low, gruff voice with a genteel and incredibly proper vocabulary. Her grey hair and old age makeup are unconvincing, and Jones’ performance is as closed off and dull as the film around her. She’s just got to lie back and deal with the flashbacks just as much as we do, and heaven forbid for her to crack a smile until the very end where she repeats as an invalid in a hospital bed like a happier variation of The Song of Bernadette’s crescendo.

PopMatters dubbed the film “sentimental pedagogy,” not entirely as a compliment, and that encapsulates the entirety of the film. We’re expected to venerate Miss Dove as much as her selected pupils, but there’s very little reason to care. The film is artificial in the worst ways, including in its demands for emotional catharsis. It wants your tears and pound of flesh, and it will pull out all of the devious tricks to flagellate you into feeling something, anything. Don’t be fooled, Good Morning, Miss Dove doesn’t deserve it.