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    The Paper Chase

    Uploaded by

    Ara Lim
    The document summarizes the 1973 film "The Paper Chase" which follows a first year law student named Hart at Harvard Law School. The central character is the intimidating Professor Kingsfield, played by John Houseman, who rules over his contract law class with an iron fist. Hart is an intelligent student who excels in Kingsfield's class while also developing a complex relationship with both Kingsfield and his daughter Susan. The film focuses on the dynamic between Hart and Kingsfield and highlights Houseman's outstanding performance, which won him an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Overall, the document praises the film for its intelligent and engaging portrayal of complex adult characters.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved

    The Paper Chase

    Uploaded by

    Ara Lim
    1K views2 pages
    The document summarizes the 1973 film "The Paper Chase" which follows a first year law student named Hart at Harvard Law School. The central character is the intimidating Professor Kingsfield, played by John Houseman, who rules over his contract law class with an iron fist. Hart is an intelligent student who excels in Kingsfield's class while also developing a complex relationship with both Kingsfield and his daughter Susan. The film focuses on the dynamic between Hart and Kingsfield and highlights Houseman's outstanding performance, which won him an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Overall, the document praises the film for its intelligent and engaging portrayal of complex adult characters.

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    © © All Rights Reserved

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    The document summarizes the 1973 film "The Paper Chase" which follows a first year law student named Hart at Harvard Law School. The central character is the intimidating Professor Kingsfield, played by John Houseman, who rules over his contract law class with an iron fist. Hart is an intelligent student who excels in Kingsfield's class while also developing a complex relationship with both Kingsfield and his daughter Susan. The film focuses on the dynamic between Hart and Kingsfield and highlights Houseman's outstanding performance, which won him an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Overall, the document praises the film for its intelligent and engaging portrayal of complex adult characters.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    1K views2 pages

    The Paper Chase

    Uploaded by

    Ara Lim
    The document summarizes the 1973 film "The Paper Chase" which follows a first year law student named Hart at Harvard Law School. The central character is the intimidating Professor Kingsfield, played by John Houseman, who rules over his contract law class with an iron fist. Hart is an intelligent student who excels in Kingsfield's class while also developing a complex relationship with both Kingsfield and his daughter Susan. The film focuses on the dynamic between Hart and Kingsfield and highlights Houseman's outstanding performance, which won him an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Overall, the document praises the film for its intelligent and engaging portrayal of complex adult characters.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    of 2

    The Paper Chase

    "The Paper Chase" is about an aggressive, very bright, terribly


    engaging first-year student at Harvard Law School. The movie respects
    its hero, respects the school, and most of all respects the venerable
    Professor Kingsfield, tyrant of contract law.

    Kingsfield is really the movie's central character, even though John


    Houseman gets supporting billing for the role. Everything centers
    around his absolute dictatorship in the classroom and his icy reserve
    at all other times. He's the kind of teacher who inspires total dread
    in his students, and at the same time a measure of hero worship; he
    doesn't just know contract law, he wrote the book.

    Into his classroom every autumn come several dozen would-be Harvard
    law graduates, who fall into the categories we all remember from
    school: (a) the drones, who get everything right but will go forth to
    lead lives of impeccable mediocrity; (b) the truly intelligent, who
    will pass or fail entirely on the basis of whether they're able to
    put up with the crap; (c) those with photographic memories, who can
    remember everything but connect nothing; (d) the students whose
    dogged earnestness will somehow pull them through; and (e) the
    doomed.

    One of each of these types is in the study group of Hart, the movie's
    hero, and the one who is truly intelligent. He's a graduate of the
    University of Minnesota and somewhat out of place among the Ivy
    League types, but he does well in class because he really cares about
    the law. He also cares about Kingsfield, to the degree that he breaks
    into the library archives to examine the master's very own
    undergraduate notes.

    Hart is played by Timothy Bottoms, the star of "The Last Picture


    Show." Bottoms is an awfully good actor, and so natural and
    unaffected that he shows up the mannerisms of actors like Dustin
    Hoffman or Jon Voight. Bottoms never seems to try; he's just there,
    complete and convincing. He falls in love, fatefully, with Susan
    (Lindsay Wagner), who turns out to be, even more fatefully,
    Kingsfield's daughter. Their relationship is a little hard to follow
    in the film; we aren't sure why she treats him the way she
    doesÑafter all, she loves the guyÑand the movie jerks abruptly in
    bringing them back together after a split-up.

    But that isn't fatal because the fundamental relationship in the


    movie is between Hart and Kingsfield. The crusty old professor
    obviously appreciates the intelligence and independence of his prize
    student, but he hardly ever lets his affection show; there's a great
    scene in the classroom where he calls Hart forward, offers him a
    dime, and says: "Call your mother and tell her you will never be a
    lawyer."

    Houseman is able to project subtleties of character even while


    appearing stiff and unrelenting; it's a performance of Academy Award
    quality, and resulted in an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.
    Lindsay Wagner, as the daughter, is also a surprise; she made her
    movie debut in the unfortunate "Two People," which had Peter Fonda as
    a conscience-stricken Army deserter. She wasn't able to make much of
    an impression in that one, but "The Paper Chase" establishes her as
    an actress with class and the saving grace of humor.

    What's best about the movie is that it considers interesting adults--


    young and old--in an intelligent manner. After it's over we almost
    feel relief; there are so many movies about clods reacting
    moronically to romantic and/or violent situations. But we hardly ever
    get movies about people who seem engaging enough to spend half an
    hour talking with (what would you say to Charles Bronson?). Here's
    one that works.

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