On the Radar: Bachelors Cottage

Bachelors College. Saturday, March 4. 7:00 p.m., 8:15 p.m.

Fong Auditorium in Boylston Hall

Tickets free at the Harvard Box Office.



Before the Kodak Theater hosts the 78th Academy Awards on Sunday, Fong Auditorium will feature a cinematic event of its own: the premier screening of “Bachelors Cottage,” the first film produced for public exhibition on Harvard’s campus.

Written and directed by Michael Van Devere, a Harvard Box Office associate and Extension School student, “Bachelors Cottage” tells the story of six World War I soldiers who return home, in 1918, to celebrate a friend’s wedding. They arrive at the estate of their friend’s fiancée the night before the ceremony, only to discover that there is room for only one of the six.

The rest must spend the night in the mysterious “Bachelors Cottage.” As the friends compete to remain in the luxurious hall, they relive their wartime experiences with friendship and loss.

The 36-year-old Van Devere said that his film aims to “re-imagine” old black-and-white photographs of Harvard alumni. The images, for the most part, have been removed from the campus for archival purposes.

“I decided to recreate these portraits into living, color hues that will make their presence and historical value attractive to today’s students,” the director said in an email.

The connection between past and present manifests itself in multiple facets of the film. Van Devere combines footage shot in 2005 with early twentieth-century music, radio clips from WWI, and “actualities” shot by Thomas Edison. The film’s nine credited actors are comprised of eight undergraduates and the late Harry E. Widener, class of 1907.

Widener’s photograph acts as a characterization of the soldiers’ soon-to-be-wed friend, who is visually absent from the screen.

The eight undergraduate actors auditioned for Van Devere during the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club’s late-September Common Casting session. Van Devere met with the students for weekly rehearsals before shooting the film in the Adams House Upper Common Room in late October. Van Devere then recruited the Harvard Wind Ensemble to record the film’s score.

Crafted by Harvard students and affiliates and shot on campus, “Bachelors Cottage” represents a novel cinematic endeavor that stands apart from the work done by the Visual and Environmental Studies department and HRTV. So head over to Boylston this Saturday night and witness a bit of Harvard film history—it may be almost as exciting as the red carpet itself.