MEDIUM COOL (1969) ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
D: Haskell Wexler
Robert Forster, Verna Bloom, Peter Bonerz,
Marianna Hill, Peter Boyle, Harold Blankenship
Snapshots of America, 1968. Haskell Wexler's groundbreaking experiment in cinéma vérité ultimately has less to do with its plot - about a hotshot news cameraman played by Robert Forster - than with the social and political landscape in the United Staes in the weeks leading up to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Some of what seemed topical then looks dated now, but Wexler's technique - interweaving on-the-spot documentary footage with shots of the actors in and around the scenes of the action - creates a sense of immediacy that few other movies from the period can match. Its overriding theme, the pervasive and often mercenary role of the media in contemporary society, hasn't lost any of its impact, either.
Haskell Wexler
(1922-2015)
