Medium Cool

A car has overturned on the road and there is a woman inside. A crew arrives, shoots it, and then someone telephones for an ambulance. John Cassellis works in television news and there is a glass between him and the event. Racial tension in the city is rising, demonstrations begin, and news crews are everywhere. John meets a woman; Eileen has come from West Virginia, has a son, and is trying to hold on in the city. Then John learns his own channel has been handing its footage to the police. The convention is coming to town and the streets are closing. Haskell Wexler writes and directs; he was known as a cinematographer and this is his first fiction feature. Robert Forster plays John and Verna Bloom plays Eileen. It is an American production. The film was shot in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic convention; the clashes in the streets are not staged but filmed inside the actual event. A warning heard on the soundtrack is its best known moment; the crew really is caught in the middle of tear gas. The matter it treats is the responsibility of the person holding the camera; the film gives it not as an argument but as a situation that keeps recurring. It was released in America with an adult rating and its distribution stayed limited. The narrative deliberately blurs the line between fiction and record. The ending repeats the opening scene and the look this time turns to the viewer. Its limit is structure; the narrative is scattered, the characters secondary, and the plot weak. Who it is for: viewers who like American cinema of the sixties and political production. Who it is not for: it is scattered, the recording quality uneven, and the ending cold.