Gentle early morning light. Harvard University. Law school. An empty lecture room. Wooden tables on ascending tiers, circling around a proscenium-like podium. Students begin filtering in. Credits are rolling.
This is the key setting for The Paper Chase.
The students are here to learn contract law from the illustrious Dr. Charles W. Kingsfield Jr., a distinguished professor more feared than admired. Indeed, he goes for the jugular in his first minute. He glances at his seating chart and picks out James Hart (Timothy Bottoms), asking him to recite the details of a particular case. It’s the first day. Hart hasn’t read the case. And Kingsfield sets the students straight. The first lesson assignments were posted. They should have come prepared. He will not be giving lectures. He expects the students to do the reading and thus teach themselves the law. Using the Socratic method, he will challenge them with questions. He’s going to teach them to think.
Hart is humiliated. But he hangs in there. He joins a study group run by Ford (Graham Beckel), which includes Anderson (Edward Herrmann) among a few others. Shortly thereafter he meets and starts a fling with Susan Fields (Lindsay Wagner). His study group warns him that balancing law school and a relationship is more than one can handle. But he hangs in there.
Hart’s initial dread of Kingsfield turns slowly into admiration, almost idolatry. He carefully plots his entry into the top echelon of students who volunteer to answer Kingsfield’s questions in class. He reads everything the professor has written and has been written about him. One night he even sneaks into a prohibited area of the library to read Kingsfield’s handwritten notes from his own contracts class back in 1927.
As the school year progresses, Hart will have to hang in there as his relationship with Susan yo-yo’s … sometimes up, sometimes down. His study group will become fractious and begin to disintegrate. His obsessions will lead him to overlook important appointments that damage his relationships.
But he hangs in there. Should you?
Skip It
First, let’s note: Look at those tweed jackets, those shaggy hairstyles and the ‘staches on those guys in the lecture all. And yes, it’s almost entirely guys. Among a few female students, only one, Farranti (Blair Brown, in her second credited screen role), is presented as fully the equal of the young men surrounding her. It’s circa 1973. The Paper Chase is the proverbial product of its times. But it exists only in the microcosm of the Harvard Law School. There’s no talk of Vietnam, Watergate, Nixon in China, the final moon landing, or Gloria Steinem and women’s lib. One can’t fault this. The Paper Chase is like a time capsule, and gives us nothing to judge good or bad about the zeitgeist of a particularly fraught period in America.
If you were expecting to come away with some eye-opening insights into contract law, don’t try hanging in for that. While the camera is focused on Kingsfield probing his students for details and insights, it’s all about the performances, not the ideas. The conversations flit by and unlike the students, you are not challenged or given enough detail to appreciate the finer points.
The real thematic elements are laid out pretty bluntly. Hart and his study group colleagues talk obsessively about how important their grades will be: a piece of paper that will get them entrée to the law review, scouted by the best firms, paid more. It’s their ticket to success, a comfortable life. Girlfriend Susan is in the midst of a divorce, seeking her own piece of paper that will return her independence.
John Houseman won a best supporting actor Oscar, and it’s so well deserved. From his very first close up to his last, he is intimating, cold, demanding, impersonal … scary in every way. Do the filmmakers try to give him a character arc, show him even once being sympathetic? No. And Houseman is seamless in achieving that. Give him an A+.
Timothy Bottoms, a native Californian, is fine as the Minnesotan Hart, who arrives somewhat naïve but has a calm midwestern pragmatism that helps him hang in there. As a character, Hart is not entirely likeable, babbling endlessly about his law school ordeals to Susan and expecting her to be supportive of his personal goals while getting to know very little about hers. Hart has to be alternately likeable and grating, and Bottoms pulls it off. Let’s say B, or B+
Lindsay Wagner as Susan isn’t given much to do throughout, having no identified profession and serving mostly as a foil to the obsessed Hart. But she does a stand-up job delivering the finale’s impassioned speech about the pointless labor everyone endures to hang in and acquire these pieces of paper … the grades, the certificate of divorce. She earns a B- or B.
My favorite characters were actually a few of Hart’s study group colleagues. Graham Beckel as Ford seems so self-assured as the multi-generational law student keeping up the family tradition. He remains a true friend to Hart even while he becomes increasingly rattled as exams arrive. Then there’s Edward Herrmann, who is engaging as Anderson. Is he being analytical or non-analytical in his attitudes about what matters (usually not much) and what doesn’t (also seemingly not much)? He’s completely believable as a guy who can talk compellingly without actually saying much. For them both, B+ or A-.
Who should hang in there and watch it? If you want to experience what it was like to be a bright and ambitious young man in Harvard Law School in the early 70s, isolated from any worldly concern beyond making good grades and having a fling with a beautiful young woman, then this immersive experience will deliver. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with The Paper Chase. The acting is fine, the script is fine. But as something that will touch you today, its time has passed. It’s C+ at best. If you’re looking to fill out your film history for 1973, there’s some A+ viewing to do: The Sting, The Exorcist, American Graffiti, Serpico … gosh, maybe even Paper Moon.