Medium Cool (1969)

User Rating:

7.4/10   

Director:

Haskell Wexler

Writer:

Haskell Wexler (writer)

Release Date:

1970 (Japan)

Genre:

Drama | Romance

Tagline:

Beyond the age of innocence... into the age of awareness

Plot:

TV news camera find himself becoming personally involved in the Violence which erupts around the 1968 Democratic Convention.

Plot Keywords:

Violence | Protest | Ghetto | Self Reflexivity | Fight

Awards:

2 wins & 1 nomination

Cast

Robert Forster	...	John Cassellis
Verna Bloom	...	Eileen
Peter Bonerz	...	Gus
Marianna Hill	...	Ruth
Harold Blankenship	...	Harold
Charles Geary	...	Buddy
Sid McCoy	...	Frank Baker
Christine Bergstrom	...	Dede
William Sickinger	...	News Director Karlin
Robert McAndrew	...	Pennybaker
Marrian Walters	...	Social worker
Beverly Younger	...	Rich Lady
Edward Croke	...	Plain-clothesman
Doug Kimball	...	Newscaster
Peter Boyle	...	Gun Clinic Manager

Runtime:

111 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Canada:R (Ontario) | Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15 | USA:R (re-rating) (1970) | USA:X (1969) | UK:X

Filming Locations:

Chicago, Illinois, USA

Company:

H & J

Trivia:

Film was originally rated "X", but re-rated "R" after an appeal.

Quotes:

John Cassellis: Jesus I love to shoot film.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Jackie Brown: How It Went Down (2002) (V)

Soundtrack:

Who Needs the Peace Corps?

Captures the time, place and feeling

Movies have a way of capturing the moment better than recreating it. I can only dread what a recreated 1968 in Chicago would look like from a Hollywood perspective. It would probably resemble something out of Forrest Gump. But Medium Cool happened to capture some brutal fight scenes with police in Chicago as well as scenes from the black ghettos. You can't recreate this stuff. This isn't a documentary but cinema verité and combines fiction and non-fictional elements. It's all shot with Chicago of 68 in the background. A landmark and infamous year for the US with the assassinations of RFK and MLK as well as the 1968 Democratic National Convention which was met with severe state repression. The state wasn't negotiating at this time, it was brutally sending men off to war and attacking those at home with the hired goons of the police force.

It's a great movie which manages to combine fiction and non-fiction and shows us what the sixties were really like. It wasn't all love beads and LSD, although there is an amusing psychedelic sequence which takes place in a club.

I think what I liked most was that even people who were non-political were being dragged into the politics of the time. Events were that serious at the time and people had to begin picking sides, the pleasant, white, middle-class interior of the Chicago DNC or outside fighting and raging against the police.