Back to school 101: Watch these flicks

‘The Paper Chase’ (1973)
“Animal House” is the definitive look at college partying, but no film better captures the high-pressure environment of serious academic life than this coming-of-age drama starring Timothy Bottoms as James Hart, an ambitious Harvard Law School freshman. John Houseman steals the show as the ice-cold Professor Kingsfield, who demands perfection and inspires Hart to push himself as far as he can to win the prof’s respect, only to find himself pulled in a completely different direction when he falls in love with Kingsfield’s daughter (Lindsey Wagner, best known as the Bionic Woman).

‘Horse Feathers’ (1932)
Though it’s old enough that one of its major scenes takes place in a Prohibition-era speakeasy, “Horse Feathers” remains one of the Marx Brothers’ funniest movies, which ought to be enough of a recommendation for just about anybody. It was made just before “Duck Soup,” the brothers’ high point on film, and the parody of university life and college sports is jam-packed with anarchic verbal wit. When Groucho somehow gets himself appointed president of Huxley College, he vows to save the institution by junking the academics and bulking up the football team. (See, it’s still pretty modern after all.) When his flabbergasted faculty asks him where the students will sleep if he goes through with his plan to make room for a new stadium, by tearing down the rest of the college, he gets off one of the movie’s best lines: “Where they always sleep — in the classroom.”

‘The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’ (1969)
Maggie Smith is possibly most familiar to filmgoers these days as Harry Potter’s stern but sympathetic teacher Minerva MacGonagall, but she won an Oscar for her portrayal of another teacher with a quite different personality in this film based on the novel by Muriel Sparks. Edinburgh teacher Jean Brodie is a free spirit out to motivate her impressionable group of young girls to future greatness with pearls of wisdom such as “Goodness, truth and beauty come first.” (It should be noted that Brodie is far from all-wise — the film, set in the 1930s before the start of WWII, makes clear Brodie’s naïve approval of Mussolini.) Her flamboyant disregard for convention endears her to her students and two romantically inclined male teachers, but makes her a threat to the school’s authority figures, leading to a catastrophic confrontation. Brodie falls into the category of sentimental weepers about the struggles of inspirational teachers that also includes “Dead Poets Society” and “Mr. Holland’s Opus,” but a smart script and Smith’s performance make it a memorable example of the genre.

‘Diabolique’ (1955)
Henri-Georges Clouzot’s French thriller is the greatest thriller Alfred Hitchcock never made — that’s because Clouzot bought the rights to the source novel before Hitch could get his hands on it. The movie takes places at a dilapidated boarding school run by a bullying boor who’s mean to everyone — the children, his chronically ill wife and his mistress. The two women join forces and kill their tormentor, dumping his body in a murky swimming pool, but things (as they often are in murder mysteries) are not what they seem. If you’ve ever wondered what your teachers and professors are really up to when school’s out, give this one a try.

‘The Blackboard Jungle’ (1955)
Remember when rock ’n’ roll was dangerous — really dangerous? You have to go back a full half-century, to this high-school drama whose opening credits, anchored by Bill Haley’s song “Rock Around The Clock,” helped launch the rock era. Glenn Ford plays an idealistic English teacher who discovers that his new school is run by gangs of juvenile delinquents (including Sidney Poitier, in one of his earliest roles). A battle of wills ensues as Ford tries to enforce order among a student body who don’t have any respect for him or his authority. Though it’s become inevitably somewhat dated, “Blackboard Jungle” was nominated for four Oscars and was hugely controversial in its day for its gritty take on urban violence.

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