the paper chase

Director: james bridges

Actor: timothy bottoms,lindsay wagner,john houseman,graham beckel

Data Published: Tue Oct 16 1973

Genres: Comedy,Drama

Key Words: law,class,harvard law school,law student,study group

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070509/

WIKI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paper_Chase_(film)

Description: The Paper Chase is a movie starring Timothy Bottoms, Lindsay Wagner, and John Houseman. A first-year law student at Harvard Law School struggles with balancing his coursework and his relationship with the daughter of his sternest...

Plot: James Hart (Timothy Bottoms) starts his first year at Harvard Law School in a very bad way. In his contract law course with Professor Charles W. Kingsfield Jr. (John Houseman), he assumes the first class will be an outline of the course. When Kingsfield immediately delves into the material using the Socratic method and asks Hart the first question, Hart is totally unprepared and feels so utterly humiliated that, after class, he throws up in the bathroom. Hart is invited to join a study group with five other students: While out getting pizza, Hart is asked by a woman, Susan Fields (Lindsay Wagner), to walk her home, due to her feeling uncomfortable with a man who had been following her. Hart returns to her house soon after and asks her on a date, after which they begin a relationship. Their relationship is complex; she resents the time he devotes to his studies, while he expects her to provide him with a great deal of attention and wants a firm commitment. When Hart and his classmates are invited to a cocktail party hosted by Kingsfield, he is stunned to discover that Susan is Kingsfield's married daughter. (She is, however, separated from her husband and eventually gets a divorce.) She and Hart break up and get back together several times. Hart divides the class into three groups: those who have given up; those who are trying, but fear being called upon in class to respond to Kingsfield's questions; and the "upper echelon". As time goes on, he moves from the second classification to the third. Late one night, Hart and another student break into a secured room of the library and read personal notes Kingsfield had taken when he was a law student. The mounting pressure, as the course nears its end, gets to everyone. When Hart gives Kingsfield a flippant answer, the professor gives him a dime and tells him, "Call your mother. Tell her there is serious doubt about your becoming a lawyer." Hart calls Kingsfield a "son of a bitch" and starts to walk out. Surprisingly, Kingsfield agrees with his assessment and invites him to sit back down, which he does. Brooks makes an unsuccessful suicide attempt and drops out of school. The study group is torn apart by personal bickering. With final exams looming, Hart and Ford prepare feverishly in a hotel room for three days. The film is a faithful adaptation of the novel, although it adds two things not in the book: Hart's first name and middle initial (James T.), and his grade in contract law (93, an A). In both the novel and the film, Hart makes a paper airplane out of the unopened letter containing his grades and sends it sailing into the ocean.[2]