Medium Cool

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For the record label, see Medium Cool Records.
Medium Cool
Directed by Haskell Wexler
Written by Haskell Wexler
Starring Robert Forster
Verna Bloom
Peter Bonerz
Marianna Hill
Harold Blankenship
Music by Mike Bloomfield
Cinematography Haskell Wexler
Editing by Verna Fields
Paul Golding
Distributed by Paramount
Release date(s) 1969
Running time 110 min.
Language English
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Medium Cool (1969) is a film directed by Haskell Wexler and starring Robert Forster, Verna Bloom, Peter Bonerz, Marianna Hill and Harold Blankenship. It takes place in Chicago in the summer of 1968. The country is experiencing great turmoil because of the war in Vietnam, extreme violence on the home front (including the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy), glaring class divisions, and an increase in police and military activity against the people.

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[edit] Plot summary

John Cassellis (Robert Forster) is a television news cameraman. In one of the opening scenes, a group of cameramen and journalists are discussing the ethical responsibilities within their profession: When should filming a gruesome scene end and human responsibility to try to save a life begin? As viewers we are presented with issues such as violence as spectacle, political and social discontent, extreme racism, and class divisions. The film is constantly juggling actual footage with feature film image. Wexler uses footage from military training camps in Illinois who are preparing for potential riots and demonstrations from students during the Democratic National Convention later that summer.

Cassellis is seemingly hardened to ethical and social issues at first and is more concerned with pursuing women like Ruth (Marianna Hill) than getting his job done right. Yet once Cassellis finds out that his news station has been leaking all of the stories and information gathered by the cameramen and news journalists to the FBI, he becomes enraged. The news station has created an excuse to fire him and Cassellis is let go. Cassellis meets a widow whose husband died in the Vietnam War. Eileen (Verna Bloom) and her son moved from West Virginia to Chicago. Cassellis grows fond of both Eileen and her son, Harold. The film concludes with a scene wherein Eileen is walking through rioting crowds, which is actual footage of students in Chicago demonstrating during the Democratic National Convention in the summer of 1968; her son has gone missing and she is desperately seeking Cassellis for help, but he is filming the Democratic National Convention. As a result, the fictional story and real-life brutality merge. The director explained that he planned principal photography to coincide with the convention, expecting that a riot would occur, which it did.

The title comes from Marshall McLuhan's work in which he described TV as a "cool" medium. The "cooler" the medium, "the more someone has to uncover and engage in the media" in order to "fill in the blanks." The movie questions the role and responsibilities of television and its newscasts.

The music in the film was assembled by guitarist Mike Bloomfield (Haskell Wexler's cousin). Throughout the film there is music from the early Mothers of Invention albums by rock musician Frank Zappa.

[edit] Historical context

As noted above, the film was shot at a time of great political upheaval in the United States. 1968 was a tumultuous year in America, and Haskell Wexler's film reflects the conflicted nature of the country at the time. Issues of race, gender, war, and political violence ran rampant. The Tet Offensive was launched; Martin Luther King was murdered in Memphis in April; race riots occurred in major cities all over the country. In June, Robert Kennedy was also assassinated. Wexler's film was unsurprisingly controversial with distributors, and received an 'X' rating which delayed its release (it was re-rated R in 1970). Discussing this, Wexler said: "They also objected to the language and the nudity, things which ultimately meant the film received an 'X' rating. What no one had the nerve to say was that it was a political 'X'" (Cronin, 2001). Obviously, the film struck a nerve as it was truly a product of the times in which it was made—there is no separating the political climate of the United States and the material in the film.

[edit] Critical response

Much critical response to Medium Cool focused around the revolutionary techniques of combining fact and fiction rather than the plot of the film. In his 1969 review, Roger Ebert wrote "In Medium Cool, Wexler forges back and forth through several levels...There are fictional characters in real situations...there are real characters in fictional situations" (Ebert, 1969). While Ebert did not find the plot to be particularly innovative, he acknowledged that Wexler purposely left it up to his audience to fill in the gaps of the romance, and at the same time presented images of great political significance. Ultimately, Ebert credited Wexler with masterfully combining multiple levels of filmmaking to create a film that is "important and absorbing" (Ebert, 1969).

Similarly, in his 1969 review of the film for The New York Times, Vincent Canby credits Wexler with presenting his audience with powerful imagery through the use of documentary filmmaking. He wrote that Medium Cool was "an angry, technically brilliant movie that uses some of the real events of last year the way other movies use real places — as backgrounds that are extensions of the fictional characters" (Canby, 1969). Like Ebert, Canby pointed out that the political atmosphere of the film fills in the blanks left open by a relatively superficial plot. Furthermore, Canby noted the film's historical significance: "The result is 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, fear and violence" (1969). Like Ebert, Canby felt that the real significance of the film was in its capturing of a specific political situation rather than its conventional success through plot and character development. Canby wrote: "Medium Cool is an awkward and even pretentious movie, but...it has an importance that has nothing to do with literature." (1969).

[edit] Trivia

  • Renowned editor Verna Fields is credited as having edited Medium Cool, but it was actually Paul Golding who worked on the film. Fields is credited because Golding was not a union member at the time.[citation needed]
  • Harold Blankenship, who played the young boy Harold in Medium Cool, was tracked down by film-maker Paul Cronin (who made the documentary 'Look Out Haskell, It's Real') and appears in Cronin's film Sooner or Later. Blankenship named his first son after Haskell Wexler.
  • Out-takes of Medium Cool were reportedly used in Brett Morgen's film Chicago 10 (2007).
  • One of the first mainstream films, along with Women in Love (1969) to feature male frontal nudity.

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