I'm sure that football fans in the southern and western seven-eighths of the country would dispute the point vigorously, but for a certain Northeastern upper-crust sector of American society, no single event in college gridiron history comes close to...

That verb in the title is no typo.

In fact, "Harvard Beats Yale 29-29" comes from the most famous headline in the history of Harvard's undergraduate newspaper the Crimson. That headline refers to what remains the most famous football game in Ivy League history. It occurred 40 years ago this Sunday, when Harvard made such a jaw-dropping comeback - scoring 16 points in the final 42 seconds against a much superior Yale team - that it seemed like victory every way but numerically.

No matter how storied or exciting, a football game is still just a football game. Kevin Rafferty, the director of "Harvard Beats Yale 29-29," opening today at the Brattle, recognizes that what gives the game its enduring interest - and what, in turn, makes his documentary so engaging - is the way it ramifies in other contexts.

Rafferty's approach could hardly be simpler. He goes back and forth between footage of the original television broadcast as called by the late Don Gillis to current-day talking-head interviews with players on both sides.

They are, almost without exception, excellent commentators: articulate, reflective, at once proud of their involvement in the game and not unaware of its relative insignificance in any larger scheme of things. Also, they are all white. (Yale's star running back Calvin Hill, an African-American, isn't interviewed.) This underscores how the game's greater import, as the players point out, has to do with its...
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