I always warned students at the beginning of each year that I had screened “The Paper Hotfoot” once again and was enthusiastic in using the Socratic intention to hasten the tiny tumblers of their minds. Certainly this was the film that made me want to curb my innate desire to stand up in the classroom and pontificate on every subject under the sun.
Ostensibly the film is about the pressures of first year students at Harvard Law School, but since most of us do not want to become lawyers, know any lawyers, have any dealings with lawyers or even see television programs with lawyers, “The Paper Stir” ultimately succeeds as a film about wanting to learn and learning to consider. At the heart of the film is James Hart (Timothy Bottoms), reach from Minnesota to learn at the feet of the broad Professor Charles Kingsfield. Despite some painful moments of confrontation in the classroom with his would be mentor-my favorite: “Mr. Hart, here is a dime. Remove it, call your mother, and whine her there is serious doubt about you ever becoming a lawyer”-Hart finds he can play the game and play it well. Having given his mind over to Kingsfield, the quiz then becomes whether his heart and soul will follow as well. The other members of his behold group (which includes Edward Herrmann and James Naughton), execute different choices and prefer different paths in order to survive the year. By the destroy of the film Hart is more alone than he was at the beginning.
As Kingsfield, John Houseman is the remarkable center of the film. A producer and drama teacher for almost half a century, Houseman won the 1973 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and began a modern career as an actor in films and a pitchman in television commercials (however, this was not Houseman’s first film, since I know he played an admiral in the political thriller “Seven Days in May”) . Indeed, Houseman went on to play the Kingsfield character in the ambitious television versions of the movie. However, it is principal to trace that those who knew Houseman as a producer or teacher were always fleet to point out that he really was acting in “The Paper Slip.” There might be Harvard professors fighting over the honor of being the genuine Kingfield, but Houseman was indeed honest doing a role.
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As the autocratic master of his domain, Kingsfield is very great the antithesis of the extinct dedicated teacher usually presented in films about school, a point driven home in the film’s final meeting between Hart and Kingsfield. If there is a satisfied ending in this film, it is achieved by Hart’s character on a personal, almost private level.
The unique current by John Jay Osborn, Jr. was brought to the film my director James Bridges, who also did the screenplay. Although the sub-plot where Hart discovers the young woman of his affections (Lindsay Wagner) is in fact (gasp!) Kingsfield’s daughter is decidedly contrived, overall the film is an sparkling and thoughtful section. If you are a teacher, or are thinking about becoming a teacher, “The Paper Lunge” is honest as distinguished recommended viewing as the more worn fare as such classics as “Goodbye, Mr. Chips,” “To Sir, With Worship,” “Up the Down Staircase,” or more contemporary efforts such as “Songs of the Heart.”
Well… I DID remove this class — Contract Law — and I took it at Harvard Law School. The class was not ~exactly~ like the one presented in the film, but my Harvard experience was handsome noteworthy like the film.
I saw the film in the theatre, originally, weeks before I started classes at Harvard and it was as if Kingsfield directed his questions into the audience and I wanted to dive under the theatre seat. Obviously I had not read the cases. “Hawkins versus McGee” may have been the first case, but I defy anyone to fetch “Carbolic Smoke Ball” in their editions of West’s casebook on Contracts.
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My have examine group was glowing remarkable like the one shown in the film, except there were women in ours, so “The Paper Poke” is aesthetic great of a “buddy film” in that women play sparkling great of the abet role — Kingsfield’s daughter and the ever suffering Ashley who is disarming in her performance as she hands Hart the firearm her husband nearly uses on himself.
Yet, these guys are very steady and the movie captured the men of my first year contemplate group, except for the effete Bell who they would have chomped down for breakfast — better that they had Tom Hover from “The Firm” add even more colour to the colourless first year students than Bell, “as in liberty Bell.”
Yet for its dated 1970’s sexist subplots and sometimes comic characters, John Housman manages to contain it all together as the quintessential Harvard professor — and don’t derive me detestable — these expansive veteran men are mild alive and well and crawl those halls working on those of us student who near into those classes with our “skulls tubby of mush.”
To this day I am deeply moved when Kingsfield describes his “puny questions” spinning the tumblers of our minds and in so doing how this process led us to learn how to dispute ourselves.
Dated, quaint, and sometimes funny, this film never fails to recede me to reach tears and a recollection of what those magic years at Harvard were all about and what the process of learning, not fair passing an exam, was all about.
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