The Paper Chase

A first-year law student struggles with balancing his coursework and his relationship with the daughter of a stern professor.

• Director: James Bridges
• Genre:Drama
• Runtime:111 minutes

Cast

Timothy Bottoms : James T. Hart
Lindsay Wagner : Susan Fields
John Houseman : Charles W. Kingsfield Jr.
Graham Beckel : Franklin Ford III
James Naughton : Kevin Brooks

Expecting only the basic pressures of attending Harvard Law School, a serious, hard-working student named James 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). Graham Beckel, Edward Herrmann, and James Naughton co-star as other law students.

The film is an extremely faithful adaptation of the novel, but it adds two revelations not in the book: Hart’s first name and middle initial (James T.), and the final grade that Hart got in Contract Law. (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.)

Kingsfield’s words of advice to his class: “You teach yourselves the law, but I train your minds. You come in here with a skull full of mush; you leave thinking like a lawyer.” Read more