Medium Cool | | Cast : | Verna Bloom, Peter Bonerz, Robert Forster | | Director : | Haskell Wexler | | Studio : | Paramount Home Video | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen | | Released Date : | January 01, 1969 | | DVD Released Date : | December 11, 2001 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), English (Subtitled), English (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | X (Mature Audiences Only) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | July 23, 2005 | | Summary | A seminal film of 60's independent cinema. | Content
 | There is much to be learned about the craft of film-making from observing this stunning film. "Medium Cool" came into existence as a pet project of renowned cinematographer Haskell Wexler ("Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", "In the Heat of the Night", "Bound For Glory"). Wexler spent $800,000 in personal funds (much later reimbursed by Paramount) to craft this angry blend of reality and theater, set against the backdrop of the tumultuous 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. Interspersing actual footage from these chaotic events (ironically some of the riot footage was later subpoenaed by the government); Wexler used the character of a TV news cameraman to discuss weighty issues of personal/professional ethics, idealism and responsibility. Whose purposes should news footage serve? What is the place and responsibility of an individual in a society marked by out-of-control chaotic turmoil?
The film's title is a not-so-subtle play on Marshall McLuhan's designation of television as "the cool medium." Despite Medium Cool's idiosyncratic, forceful pushing of the traditional film-making envelope, critical comment was laudatory. Vincent Canby of the New York Times called "Medium Cool" "a film of tremendous visual impact, a kind of cinematic 'Guernica', a picture of America in the process of exploding into fragmented bits of hostility, suspicion and violence."
Unfortunately, despite enthusiastic critical reviews, studio indifference to the film and the "X" rating thanks to some brief full-frontal nudity, the film was one of the first major American films to receive an X rating from the MPAA (though it was subsequently been re-rated R), the result of a creatively ecstatic bedroom scene-one that Vincent Canby dryly noted: "should give lust a good name"-diminished the number of people who saw this complex, challenging, at times perplexing film, dubbed by Wexler as "a wedding between features and cinéma vérité." Disillusioned by the bitter experience, Wexler for the next several years abandoned commercial film-making for experimental forays into radical cinema ("Brazil: A Report on Torture", "The Trial of the Catonsville Nine" and others).
The film seems obviously influenced by the French New Wave, particularly by the work of Godard. This improvisational movie integrates didactic discussions about the responsibility taken by anyone who wields a camera, casual conversations about the lack of voice given to minorities in the media, and several sobering looks at the youth who were affected by the frenzy into its fourth-wall shattering panorama. It's great to see a filmmaker like Wexler at work, since he is concerned about important social issues and the potential of the medium. Rarely has a mainstream American feature so acutely and plainly tackled many of these artistic concerns.
Ultimately, though, "Medium Cool" is a movie milestone in spite of some of its flaws. Certainly there is much to be learned about the craft of film-making from observing both the errors and on the occasions that the film's themes conspire to work together, the results are stunning. The political growing pains portrayed in the film seem to exist behind the camera as well, as American filmmakers in the late 1960s were grappling with the responsibilities brought about by their new ability to make films with adult content. That a major studio distributed this film is amazing. It's doubtful that the film would receive similar treatment three decades later. Whatever its weaknesses, they are easy to forgive since "Medium Cool" represents a pioneering slice of cinematic history. [filmfactsman] |
| Rating | | | Date | July 20, 2005 | | Summary | Something very special... | Content
| Absorbing, thought provoking and, above all, a unique record of an important "place & time", why "Medium Cool" still fails to gain the attention it deserves remains one of life's great mysteries.
First off, it's a pretty good if somewhat disjointed story... two "world-wise" middle class news reporters are sent to film the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago and become unwittingly involved in its political demonstrations, the inner city problems that have precipitated them, and the lives of a single mother and her young son in this harsh, confusing and seriously under-privileged world. Its acting, in particular from Robert Forster as the lead reporter and the 13 year old Harold Blankenship as the son, is excellent and at times so effective that it's difficult to remember you're watching a rigidly sequenced film rather than a social documentary. And, it's overlaid with some quite stunning cinema-photography from director Haskell Wexler, one of America's very best exponents of the art, backed up by a perfectly pitched late 60's soundtrack.
Good enough so far, but that's just the start. Add-in its extensive live footage from the streets of Chicago as the riots develop, taken by the film's camera crew as they themselves are caught-up in a very "real" political drama, its ominous sequencing of the build up of events from a fun "day in the park" for the hippies/yippies to serious "police state" level violence, its equally chilling images of what was going on inside the Convention Hall while all of this was taking place, and the clever and disturbing scenes of the mother's desperate search for her lost son as Wexler films her within the increasingly anarchic crowds of demonstrators & troops actually on the streets at the time, and you've got... something very special.
Part film and part documentary, not all of what you think is "real" in "Medium Cool" is, and the lines between live and acted scenes are sometimes confusingly and frustratingly blurred, as in the famous call from one of the camera crew of "look out Haskell this is real" as a tear gas canister lands in front of them, which was in fact over-dubbed afterwards. But that's the whole point of the film as the final, almost startling scenes reveal. How far is the media in control? Is what you're seeing real, distorted or contrived? Wexler's brilliance is to take this underlying theme and to mould it into a fascinating exploration of inner city life, American society in a period of huge change, and the power/needs of the media in a TV dominated world, while, in parallel, producing a gripping record of what it's like to be in the centre of a demonstration that's spiralling out of control. Juxtaposing the impersonality of reporting with the very personal situations that are involved, it raises a whole series of questions on the way without falling into the trap of most films of the era in trying to ram home too many answers. And, as a result, it remains as relevant today as it did then.
Quite rightly regarded as one of the best "counter culture" films of the late 60's and much richer and more thought provoking than this classification usually implies, it remains one of the most under-rated films out there.
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| Rating | | | Date | December 09, 2004 | | Summary | I had to see it twice! | Content
| I saw "Medium Cool" shortly after I had been drafted in 1969 - in San Antonio where I was going through basic training for conscientious objectors. I was so blown away by this film I sat through it a second time (you could do that in those days) to try to take it all in. The mixture of documentary style direction with actors playing characters was a new idea, but to put them into an explosive (& eventually exploding) situation was a stroke of cinematic genius by Wexler. The movie also received an "X" rating for a scene you could probably show during family viewing hours on TV these days.
The thing that still stands out in my mind after all these years is Robert Forster's characterization of the news cameraman. Working in this "cool" medium, he stays detached from the people he films almost to the point of inhumanity. In the opening scene, Forster and sound man Peter Bonerz come upon a crash on an expressway, the car against a wall with its horn blowing continuously and a bleeding woman lying on the ground next to the open passenger's door. They procede to start filming the scene, but Bonerz compains that the horn is wiping out all other sound he might get. Forster goes to the open (from the crash) hood of the car & yanks out the horn wires. They then continue filming the scene without ever considering calling for help for the injured woman on the ground until they're finished. You begin to wonder who are these guys who callously put getting the story, which they would have gotten anyway, ahead of helping someone who's been injured.
Two other scenes come to mind which give insight into Forster's character. In one scene with girlfriend Marianna Hill, she challenges him by asking him about a scene from the movie "Mondo Cane". This scene involved tortoises on a Pacific island whose sense of direction had been affected by atomic bomb tests to the point where they no longer knew how to find the ocean. She asks Forster if, after they were done filming, the cameramen might have turned the tortoises around and pointed them toward the ocean. She really wants to know what he would have done. Forster replies, "How do I know? Those were French cameramen."
The second scene occurs when Forster is watching the mourning for the death of Martin Luther King on TV at Verna Bloom's house. His reaction to the outpouring of grief & emotion on the screen is to say, "Jesus, I love to shoot film."
Forster (& the others I've mentioned) are great in this film. And among the other points he makes with this film, Wexler reminds us that to the TV camera, our lives, joys, accomplishments and especially our sufferings are reduced to being just frames of film which may occasionally be newsworthy. |
| Rating | | | Date | July 09, 2004 | | Summary | "Medium Cool" Doesn't Bring Enough Heat | Content
| I first time I became aware of this movie was when I read Roger Ebert named it one of the ten best films of 1969, though the film was not available on vhs or dvd. "Medium Cool" is a werid hybrid. It has moments that work and other that don't seem as polished. This may be due to the improvised atmosphere the film creates. When "Medium Cool" works it captures the feeling and the spirit of the 60s. It belongs in a class of movies such as "Blow-Up" , "Weekend", & "Z". Even if you were not born in those times, and I wasn't, the film manages to lets us know what it was like back then. The opening moments of the film are my favorite. It has a documentary feeling. It seems intense, and maybe because I'm a journalist major I enjoyed the scene where the journalist talk about the choices they make in what they show on TV. But ultimately "Medium Cool" is a political movie that has a political and social message. We hear characters speak about the Kennedy assassination, the war, and Dr. Martin Luther King. And while these issues are 40 years old many of the arguments being presented in the film can be argued today. For instance there is a scene with protesters and one shouts out "We have a war we do not want!" All of this is bein told while the 1968 Democratic Nation Convention is about to come to Chicago. And it works, but the movie at this point loses its focus. Now we have a love story emerging between John (Robert Forster) the star of the movie and Eileen (Verna Bloom). Their story sometimes drags the movie down. Eileen doesn't really do anything for the movie. Maybe if she were part of the protest against the war she would have fit in better or even if she was for the war that could create a another conflict the film could have used. But no this never happens. The movie also was improvised and this hurts it also. The dialogue is terrible. I've yet to see a movie that has improvised dialogue that I enjoyed. It sounds like very bad 40s "B" picture talk. The kind of dialogue that you laugh at even though you know it's suppose to be taken seriously. The movie was directed by Haskell Wexler, he also gets writing credit, producer and cinematography credit. And most people probably know him just as a cinematography. He filmmed "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", and "The Thomas Crown Affair (68 version)". Even though I didn't find the directing to be impressive he did receive a Directors Guild nomination for this film. While the movie does have its problems, bad dialogue, werid hybrid story-line and an ending I personally found unsatisfying, even though I guess you could say the movie ends the way it begins. It is still a movie I'm glad I saw. And I hope many others see it for a first or second viewing. *** 1\2 out of ***** Bottom-line: Entertaining if sometimes disappointing look at life in the 60s. Still works in today's world as many of the problems are still being fought. Worthwhile overall. |
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