Medium Cool (1969)
Country: US
Technical: col 111m
Director: Haskell Wexler
Cast: Robert Forster, Verna Bloom, Peter Bonerz, Marianna Hill, Peter Boyle
Synopsis:
At the time of the 1968 Chicago Democratic convention, a news cameraman attempts to follow up a story of a negro cab driver who hands in a dubious $10,000 wad, is fired for misuse of company film, and discovers the network has been sharing all its footage with the police and FBI.
Review:
A forerunner of the seventies political thriller, this is actually both more and less than that: a thriller plot it never quite delivers, aiming instead for the ill-focused disenchantment and cynicism that far more resemble real life. Mediation of reality is indeed its major theme, and it addresses it through both form and content: blacks talk straight to camera about how they are perceived and presented, the girlfriend speculates on the unfeeling neutrality of the cameraman when confronted with disoriented turtles, the mother's search for her son is mingled with footage of the actual peace march that resulted in massive confrontations with the authorities, and the final road tragedy is revealed to be still more live fodder, and perhaps even staged, for the TV cameramen, whose lens is finally pointed complicitly at us. The film is not without longueurs but it is nevertheless groundbreaking in its analysis of political and aesthetic factors underlying cinema, and in its use of the light Arriflex camera. Wexler was himself a cameraman.
Country: US
Technical: col 111m
Director: Haskell Wexler
Cast: Robert Forster, Verna Bloom, Peter Bonerz, Marianna Hill, Peter Boyle
Synopsis:
At the time of the 1968 Chicago Democratic convention, a news cameraman attempts to follow up a story of a negro cab driver who hands in a dubious $10,000 wad, is fired for misuse of company film, and discovers the network has been sharing all its footage with the police and FBI.
Review:
A forerunner of the seventies political thriller, this is actually both more and less than that: a thriller plot it never quite delivers, aiming instead for the ill-focused disenchantment and cynicism that far more resemble real life. Mediation of reality is indeed its major theme, and it addresses it through both form and content: blacks talk straight to camera about how they are perceived and presented, the girlfriend speculates on the unfeeling neutrality of the cameraman when confronted with disoriented turtles, the mother's search for her son is mingled with footage of the actual peace march that resulted in massive confrontations with the authorities, and the final road tragedy is revealed to be still more live fodder, and perhaps even staged, for the TV cameramen, whose lens is finally pointed complicitly at us. The film is not without longueurs but it is nevertheless groundbreaking in its analysis of political and aesthetic factors underlying cinema, and in its use of the light Arriflex camera. Wexler was himself a cameraman.
Country: US
Technical: col 111m
Director: Haskell Wexler
Cast: Robert Forster, Verna Bloom, Peter Bonerz, Marianna Hill, Peter Boyle
Synopsis:
At the time of the 1968 Chicago Democratic convention, a news cameraman attempts to follow up a story of a negro cab driver who hands in a dubious $10,000 wad, is fired for misuse of company film, and discovers the network has been sharing all its footage with the police and FBI.
Review:
A forerunner of the seventies political thriller, this is actually both more and less than that: a thriller plot it never quite delivers, aiming instead for the ill-focused disenchantment and cynicism that far more resemble real life. Mediation of reality is indeed its major theme, and it addresses it through both form and content: blacks talk straight to camera about how they are perceived and presented, the girlfriend speculates on the unfeeling neutrality of the cameraman when confronted with disoriented turtles, the mother's search for her son is mingled with footage of the actual peace march that resulted in massive confrontations with the authorities, and the final road tragedy is revealed to be still more live fodder, and perhaps even staged, for the TV cameramen, whose lens is finally pointed complicitly at us. The film is not without longueurs but it is nevertheless groundbreaking in its analysis of political and aesthetic factors underlying cinema, and in its use of the light Arriflex camera. Wexler was himself a cameraman.