Medium Cool (1969)

Few documents in any medium captured the political unrest of the late '60s with greater clarity than Medium Cool, a remarkably accomplished directorial effort from award-winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler. Wexler took to the streets of Chicago with a film crew to record how the city prepared for the 1968 Democratic Convention, and he put himself in the middle of the violent clashes between police and protestors that went on to define that event. Wexler then wove this material into a narrative about John (Robert Forster), a TV news cameraman whose ability to observe impartially the events around him is challenged by the violence of the riots, as well as by his relationship with Eileen (Verna Bloom), a young widow whose husband died in Vietnam. While it's no surprise that Wexler's footage of actual events bears the ring of truth, his staged sequences have a rough, improvised quality that meshes perfectly with the real-life sequences, and the result is a work that blurs the lines between fact and fiction. Wexler's mix of visual polemics, on-the-spot documentary, human drama, Brechtian disorientation, media-savvy analysis of television, and fashionable sex, drugs, and rock & roll made Medium Cool as intelligent and challenging as anything Jean-Luc Godard produced in Europe at the time, and Wexler's film has for the most part better withstood the test of time. It's a shame that Wexler directed so few features after Medium Cool, but, as both a work of art and a document of a central moment in American history, it remains an essential and invaluable film. Cast: Robert Forster - John Verna Bloom - Eileen Peter Bonerz - Gus Marianna Hill - Ruth Harold Blankenship - Harold Charles Geary - Buddy, Harold's Father Sid McCoy - Frank Baker Christine Bergstrom - Dede William Sickinger - News Director Robert McAndrew - Pennybaker Marrian Walters - Social Worker Beverly Younger - Rich Lady Edward Croke - Plainclothesman Doug Kimball - Newscaster Peter Boyle - Gun Clinic Manager Sandra Ann Roberts - Blonde in Car Janet Langhart - Maid Jeff Donaldson - Black Militant Bill Sharp - Black Militant Robert Paige - Black Militant Richard Abrams - Black Militant Walter Bradford - Black Militant Russell Davis - Black Militant Felton Perry - Black Militant Val Grey - Black Militant Livingston Lewis - Black Militant John Jackson - Black Militant Linda Handelman - Gun Clinic Lady Maria Friedman - Gun Clinic Lady Kathryn Schubert - Gun Clinic Lady Barbara Brydenthal - Gun Clinic Lady Elizabeth Moisant - Gun Clinic Lady Rose Bormacher - Gun-Clinic Ladies George Bouillet - Media person James H. Jacobs - Kennedy student Barbara Jones - Black militant China Lee Nancy Lee Noble - Kennedy Student Mary Smith - Kennedy student Studs Terkel - Our Man in Chicago Haskell Wexler - Cameraman on Scaffold