Themes: Twentysomething Life, Teachers and Students, College Life
Main Cast: Timothy Bottoms, Lindsay Wagner, John Houseman, Graham Beckel, Edward Herrmann
Release Year: 1973
Country: US
Run Time: 111 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG
Plot
This filmization of John Jay Osborn Jr.'s novel Paper Chase ended up one of the surprise hits of the 1973-74 movie season. Timothy Bottoms stars as the Minnesotan Hart, a brilliant but naive first-year student at the Harvard Law School. Like most of his fellow aspiring attorneys, Hart is in fearful awe of his demanding, ego-deflating instructor, Professor Kingsfield (John Houseman). He is not so much intimidated by Kingsfield, however, as to resist falling in love with the professor's pretty daughter (Lindsay Wagner). An eminent theatrical and film producer, John Houseman won an Oscar for his first important film role (no, it wasn't his first film role ever; he'd played an unbilled cameo in 1964's Seven Days in May), launching Houseman on a latter-day acting career wherein he spent most of his time playing variations of Kingsfield. Houseman also recreated the role for a Paper Chase TV series, which first ran on CBS, then on public television, then on the Showtime pay cable service. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
The Paper Chase was a high point in the careers of many of its promising stars, including Lindsay Wagner and James Naughton. For lead Timothy Bottoms, the film was a well-chosen follow-up to his breakthrough, 1971's The Last Picture Show; his subsequent parts never tapped his talents as these two films did. Writer-director James Bridges would achieve other successes, including The China Syndrome and Urban Cowboy, but none of his other films had such a wonderful balance of comedy and drama. The Paper Chase shows some concern for the generational conflicts of the post-Easy Rider Hollywood era, but the kids here are more interested in traditional values: going to school, fitting in, succeeding. John Houseman won an Academy Award for his first significant acting role, as the film's intimidating Professor Kingsfield. ~ Brendon Hanley, All Movie Guide
James Naughton - Kevin; Craig Richard Nelson - Bell; Bob Lydiard - O'Connor; Regina Baff - Asheley; Lenny Baker - Moss; Regina Batt - Asheley; Blair Brown - Miss Farranti; Jan Campbell - 1st Hotel Maid; David Clennon - Toombs; Dora Dainton - 2nd Hotel Maid
Credit
George Jenkins - Art Director, Philip L. Parslow - Associate Producer, Marion Dougherty - Casting, Christopher Seitz - First Assistant Director, James Bridges - Director, Walter Thompson - Editor, John Williams - Composer (Music Score), Gordon Willis - Cinematographer, Jack Larson - Producer, Robert C. Thompson - Producer, Roderick Paul - Producer, Gerry Holmes - Set Designer, Larry Jost - Sound/Sound Designer, Donald O. Mitchell - Sound/Sound Designer, James Bridges - Screenwriter, John Jay Osborn Jr. - Book Author
Expecting only the basic pressures of attending Harvard Law School, a serious, hard-working student named James T. Hart (Timothy Bottoms), a recent graduate of the University of Minnesota, finds himself the fearful adversary of the school's most imperious, sarcastic contracts professor, Charles W. Kingsfield, Jr. (John Houseman). Their relationship grows even more complex when the young man discovers that the woman he is dating is the professor's daughter (Lindsay Wagner). Edward Herrmann and James Naughton co-star as other law students. The film is an extremely faithful adaptation of the novel, but it adds to revelations not in the book: Hart's first name and middle initial (James T.), and the final grade that Hart got in Contract Law: an A (in both the novel and the film, Hart makes a paper airplane out of his final report card, and sends it sailing into the Atlantic Ocean without looking at it; in the film, a scene shows Kingsfield grading Hart's paper and awarding him an A).
Kingsfield's words of advice to his class: "You teach yourselves the law; I train your minds. You come in here with a skull full of mush;you leave thinking like a lawyer." (The television series kept this basic admonition, but changed it slightly by adding the qualification, "and if you survive" to the promise that the students would "leave thinking like a lawyer".
