But Jenkins says that as early as the 1920s the idea of establishing a Harvard Film Library that would have been the first of its kind was floated—and rejected.

That idea would not see the light of day until the 1979 establishment of the HFA, whose collection of original film reels Jenkins says is unparalleled by any other university.

“This place has the wherewithal to teach film studies with the thing itself rather than a pale version of the thing itself,” Jenkins says. The experience of watching the HFA’s vast array of 35 millimeter films in its theater is hardly comparable to watching a video copy of a movie, he says.

Many professors say that along with the HFA’s founding, the 1970s saw a flourishing of film studies both at Harvard and at many of its peer institutions, where formal degree-granting programs were then established.

“One could have very well said ‘its time has come’ 25 years ago,” Rentschler says.

It was in the early part of that decade that Robert Gardner—now an associate of VES, formerly its chair and the director of the Carpenter Center—says many began agitating for an independent Department of Film.

“That idea was put aside because film was always the strongest element in a department called Visual and Environmental Studies,” Gardner says.

Moreover, a fear of the academicization of film studies has led some to oppose the very idea of formalizing Harvard’s program.

“I know there was a worry [in VES that film studies] would pick up the bad habits of a hardened academic department,” Connor says.

In the absence of an official program, a core of professors interested in film studies has steadily grown within and without VES—and yet Moss says that only in the last few years has “the University given its imprimatur” to a film studies concentration.

“It’s a very cautious institution,” Jenkins says.

Several professors cite a persistent snobbery in the ivory tower as having prevented film studies from being embraced at Harvard.

“The real problem for film studies at Ivy League institutions, I think, is a bias on book culture,” Rentschler says.

Cast and Crew

Even those who agree on the wisdom of a formal program are conflicted about the exact direction such a program should take.