Movie review: Harvard Beats Yale 29-29

"You just had the sense it wasn't real."

by John P. Meyer

Documentarist Kevin Rafferty made a wicked little film called Atomic Cafe back in 1982 that compiled U.S. Government public relations films (from the 40's and 50's) which sought to demonstrate that a nuclear attack on the homeland might be somehow survivable. (No, it wasn't a comedy. Though it occasionally played like an unremittingly black one.)

With Harvard Beats Yale 29-29, Rafferty turns his camera lens to another apocalyptic occurrence - and this time it's one that actually happened.

In November of 1968, while the war in Vietnam raged (and social upheaval held sway back home), two Ivy League rivals slugged it out on the football field for gridiron bragging rights.

Further context: both Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy had just been assassinated. Harvard Yard had, for the first time in history, been "invaded" by police to quell a campus uprising. Harvard safety Pat Conway was just back from a tour with the Marines which found him weathering the siege at Khe Sanh (where he experienced daily horrors that he later shared with his teammates over beers). As Tommy Lee Jones, then a Harvard offensive lineman, puts it: "Ideas were flying around like bullets."

(Tommy Lee and Al Gore - college roommates at the time - celebrated a lonely Thanksgiving by roasting a turkey in their fireplace.)

On the Yale side of the rivalry, starting quarterback Brian Dowling was a rock star: he hadn't lost a football game since seventh grade. (His nickname amongst the Yalies was "God.") Gary Trudeau's comic strip character "B.D." was patterned after him. Soon-to-be Dallas Cowboy Calvin Hill was Dowling's go-to RB - and he was gone to quite often. Lineman Bobby Levin was dating Meryl Streep.

(In the background, George W. was getting into trouble for hanging drunkenly from goalposts.)

Going into the contest, Yale was heavily favored - they'd been winning all year (as expected) and were odds-on to crush the crimson crew. Conversely, the Harvard squad were astonished that they'd won all their games coming into this climactic matchup, since they were supposed to be in a rebuilding year. As one of them notes: "We were thrilled that we were winning, but we were kind of surprised."

Rafferty's film juxtaposes player interviews with game footage, with most of the anecdotal material coming during the first half when things were going completely as expected: Yale was in the process of methodically trouncing Harvard, racking up a score of 22 - 0 before halftime. (Backup Harvard QB Frank Champi was actually angered when the coach put him into the game, since he presumed he was being fed to the lions.)

Incredibly, the visibly shaken Champi - who his teammates hardly knew and could barely understand (he had a heavy Boston accent) - engineered one of the most remarkable comebacks in the history of the game.

For football fanatics this is "must see" stuff, offering up an insider view of a semi-mythical contest that is still known simply as "The Game." For the rest of us, it's a procedural of perseverance, a chronicle of outrageous fortune that goes a long way toward demonstrating how one might end up becoming a football fanatic.

At 105 minutes, the film seems a bit long, particularly when uninterrupted stretches of game footage come to dominate the latter part of the film. But the reminiscences of the participants, and the undiluted drama of the outcome, end up carrying the day.