Director Kevin Rafferty's Documentary takes a look back at the most legendary college football game in Ivy League history. Released to coincide with the 40th Anniversary of the match, Rafferty takes a fairly straightforward approach assembling a couple dozen of the players in that game, including the most famous, Oscar winning actor Tommy Lee Jones (Harvard, Offensive Guard). The best surviving footage of the game is a kinescope from a Boston TV station (I didn't know that was still being done that late in the 60s!) and it is generously excerpted here.
Since it involves two of the most prestigious schools in the nation, many of the interviewees here went on to successful careers as lawyers, businessmen and other professionals. Still, it's the subtext of the entire Doc that those three hours on a football field near the Cambridge campus still could mean so much to them four decades on. Other than Jones, there are cameos (via recollections and some vintage photos) of Meryl Streep (an old girlfriend of one of the players) and both Presidential Candidates in 2000, Al Gore (Harvard; roommate of Jones) and George Bush Jr. (Yale). Other social issues including the Vietnam War and the women's movement are touched upon, if fairly lightly.
HARVARD BEATS YALE 29-29 can be enjoyed just as a sports movie (and it was quite the game), but, there is more at stake here than mere athletics. Director Rafferty (who went to Harvard) recently passed on. In addition to this doc he created other memorable films including ATOMIC CAFE (1982) and BLOOD IN THE FACE (1991; where he mentored a young Michael Moore).