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3.0étoiles sur 5
70s drop-out culture clashes with law school discipline, Avril 13 2004
If you want to be inspired to go to Harvard Law School or Harvard Business School (they both use the same intimidating case study technique), this is the film to watch. It is the fear of having your name called out by the professor -- from the hundred students in the lecture theatre -- with his request that you lay out the case, that drives you to prepare well into the early hours the night before.Harvard is ultra-competitive -- it marks on a bell curve, with the bottom x% of students being automatically chucked out. (That x% may be 10%. The film doesn't spell it out, perhaps because 1973 cinema-goers weren't ready for lectures on the normal distribution.) The law school culture clashed conspicuously with the student background of the 60s/70s -- i.e. drugs, rock and roll, protests about Vietnam etc -- although little is made of this in the film. Instead we follow a year in the life of Hart, the Nice-but-Bright law student who idolises Professor Kingsfield -- determined to know everything about him, to the extent of bedding his daughter (played by Lindsay Wagner in her pre-Bionic Woman form). In this film, the lecture theatre experience (studying Contract Law with the Prof) turns out to be a breeze, compared to participating in the Study Group, which contains some really unlikeable individuals. By the end, three of the six students have dropped out of the Study Group -- one even tries to shoot himself. In the end, this film probably would be better if it didn't try also to be a romance. (I guess it was competing with 'Love Story' at the time.) Its highlights come in the lecture theatre and the study group. This is the potential for a very dark story, and I feel the director missed that opportunity. On the other hand, no accommodation is made for the audience unfamiliar with contract law -- in other words, there is plenty of technical language -- but this adds to the authority of the drama. I guess we're unlikely ever to see again the TV series of the same name that this movie spawned. So enjoy this while it's still available. For a similar experience on the page, get hold of a copy of Peter Cohen's 'The Gospel according to the Harvard Business School'.
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