The Paper Chase

James Hart, starting at Harvard Law School, walks on his first day into Professor Kingsfield's contracts class. Kingsfield answers nobody, only asks, and tears a wrong answer apart in front of the room. Hart hates the man and wants his approval. Meanwhile he learns that the woman he has met is Kingsfield's daughter. The film is not interested in legal education. It is interested in authority producing dependence: all of Hart's energy goes not into learning but into existing in the man's eyes. The gesture at the end, the envelope with his grade, resolves that in a single move. The form is academic drama: the lecture hall, study groups, nights in the library. The Socratic class scenes are its most tense passages. James Bridges directed, from John Jay Osborn Jr.'s novel, which the author wrote while a law student himself. Timothy Bottoms plays Hart and Lindsay Wagner the daughter. John Houseman, as Kingsfield, won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor; he was principally a producer and man of the theatre, and his acting career began with this part. Who it is for: viewers who like drama built on education and authority. Who it is not for: anyone who cares about the romance. That strand is weak, the female character stays functional, and the film always leaves its real interest in the lecture hall.