Medium Cool
Encyclopedia
Medium Cool is an American film
written and 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. It was notable for Wexler's use of cinema vérité
-style documentary
filmmaking techniques, as well as for combining fictional and non-fictional content.
In 2003, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry
by the Library of Congress
as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
) 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 documentary footage with feature film image. Among his sources, Wexler uses footage from military training camps in Illinois
for military troops preparing for planned demonstrations by students and anti-war activists during the Democratic National Convention
later that summer.
Cassellis is seemingly hardened to ethical and social issues; he is more concerned with pursuing women like Ruth (Marianna Hill
). Yet once Cassellis finds out that his news station has been providing the stories and information gathered by the cameramen and news journalists to the FBI
, he becomes enraged. The news station creates an excuse to fire him, and Cassellis is let go. Subsequently, Cassellis meets a widow, Eileen, whose husband has died in the Vietnam War
. Eileen (Verna Bloom
) and her son, Harold, have moved from West Virginia
to Chicago
and Cassellis grows fond of them both.
The film concludes with a scene in which Eileen is walking through rioting crowds, based on Wexler's 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 convention. As a result, the fictional story and real-life brutality merge. The director explained that he planned his principal filming schedule to coincide with the convention, expecting that a riot would occur. The 1968 Democratic National Convention protest activity resulted in a riot. There was a Congressional Investigation that concluded that this riot was a "police riot" based on massive evidence that the police moved in with violence on a mostly legal demonstration.
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). The film features contemporary music from the early Mothers of Invention albums by rock musician Frank Zappa
, as well as the Love
instrumental "Emotions" over the opening credits.
'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 1968, Robert Kennedy
was assassinated
in Los Angeles
.
Distributors considered Wexler's film controversial; its receiving an 'X' rating delayed its release. In 1970 it was re-rated R. 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'". Obviously, the film struck a nerve, as it was truly a product of the times in which it was made—there was no separating the political climate of the United States and the material in the film.
Other films of the time which attempted, in a more mainstream way, to deal with the antiwar movement and activist demonstrations on college campuses include R. P. M.
, Getting Straight
, and The Strawberry Statement
.
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." 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."
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 techniques. 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." 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." 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
."
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
written and directed by Haskell Wexler
Haskell Wexler
Haskell Wexler, A.S.C. is an American cinematographer, film producer, and director. Wexler was judged to be one of film history's ten most influential cinematographers in a survey of the members of the International Cinematographers Guild.-Early life and education:Wexler was born to a Jewish...
and starring Robert Forster
Robert Forster
Robert Forster is an American actor, best known for his roles as John Cassellis in Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool, and as Max Cherry in Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown, the latter of which gained him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.- Early life :Forster was born Robert Wallace...
, Verna Bloom
Verna Bloom
Verna Bloom is an American actress. She co-starred in the 1973 film High Plains Drifter with Clint Eastwood and the 1974 made for TV movie Where Have All The People Gone? with Peter Graves and Kathleen Quinlan...
, Peter Bonerz
Peter Bonerz
Peter Bonerz is an American actor and director who is best known as the character Dr. Jerry Robinson on The Bob Newhart Show....
, Marianna Hill
Marianna Hill
Marianna Hill , born Mariana Schwarzkopf, in Santa Barbara, California on February 9, 1941 is an American actress mostly working in American television.She has appeared in more than 70 films and television episodes...
and Harold Blankenship. It takes place in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
in the summer of 1968. It was notable for Wexler's use of cinema vérité
Cinéma vérité
Cinéma vérité is a style of documentary filmmaking, combining naturalistic techniques with stylized cinematic devices of editing and camerawork, staged set-ups, and the use of the camera to provoke subjects. It is also known for taking a provocative stance toward its topics.There are subtle yet...
-style documentary
Documentary
A documentary is a creative work of non-fiction, including:* Documentary film, including television* Radio documentary* Documentary photographyRelated terms include:...
filmmaking techniques, as well as for combining fictional and non-fictional content.
In 2003, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry
National Film Registry
The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...
by the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Plot summary
John Cassellis (Robert ForsterRobert Forster
Robert Forster is an American actor, best known for his roles as John Cassellis in Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool, and as Max Cherry in Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown, the latter of which gained him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.- Early life :Forster was born Robert Wallace...
) 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
Violence
Violence is the use of physical force to apply a state to others contrary to their wishes. violence, while often a stand-alone issue, is often the culmination of other kinds of conflict, e.g...
as spectacle, political and social discontent, extreme racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
, and class divisions. The film is constantly juggling documentary footage with feature film image. Among his sources, Wexler uses footage from military training camps in Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
for military troops preparing for planned demonstrations by students and anti-war activists during the Democratic National Convention
1968 Democratic National Convention
The 1968 Democratic National Convention of the U.S. Democratic Party was held at the International Amphitheatre in Chicago, Illinois, from August 26 to August 29, 1968. Because Democratic President Lyndon Johnson had announced he would not seek a second term, the purpose of the convention was to...
later that summer.
Cassellis is seemingly hardened to ethical and social issues; he is more concerned with pursuing women like Ruth (Marianna Hill
Marianna Hill
Marianna Hill , born Mariana Schwarzkopf, in Santa Barbara, California on February 9, 1941 is an American actress mostly working in American television.She has appeared in more than 70 films and television episodes...
). Yet once Cassellis finds out that his news station has been providing the stories and information gathered by the cameramen and news journalists to the FBI
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
, he becomes enraged. The news station creates an excuse to fire him, and Cassellis is let go. Subsequently, Cassellis meets a widow, Eileen, whose husband has died in the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
. Eileen (Verna Bloom
Verna Bloom
Verna Bloom is an American actress. She co-starred in the 1973 film High Plains Drifter with Clint Eastwood and the 1974 made for TV movie Where Have All The People Gone? with Peter Graves and Kathleen Quinlan...
) and her son, Harold, have moved from West Virginia
West Virginia
West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian and Southeastern regions of the United States, bordered by Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Ohio to the northwest, Pennsylvania to the northeast and Maryland to the east...
to Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
and Cassellis grows fond of them both.
The film concludes with a scene in which Eileen is walking through rioting crowds, based on Wexler's 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 convention. As a result, the fictional story and real-life brutality merge. The director explained that he planned his principal filming schedule to coincide with the convention, expecting that a riot would occur. The 1968 Democratic National Convention protest activity resulted in a riot. There was a Congressional Investigation that concluded that this riot was a "police riot" based on massive evidence that the police moved in with violence on a mostly legal demonstration.
The title comes from Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
Herbert Marshall McLuhan, CC was a Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar—a professor of English literature, a literary critic, a rhetorician, and a communication theorist...
'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
Mike Bloomfield
Michael Bernard "Mike" Bloomfield was an American musician, guitarist, and composer, born in Chicago, Illinois, who became one of the first popular music superstars of the 1960s to earn his reputation almost entirely on his instrumental prowess, since he rarely sang before 1969–70...
(Haskell Wexler's cousin). The film features contemporary music from the early Mothers of Invention albums by rock musician Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa
Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed...
, as well as the Love
Love (band)
Love was an American rock group of the late 1960s and early 1970s. They were led by singer/songwriter Arthur Lee and lead guitarist Johnny Echols...
instrumental "Emotions" over the opening credits.
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 the United States, and Haskell WexlerHaskell Wexler
Haskell Wexler, A.S.C. is an American cinematographer, film producer, and director. Wexler was judged to be one of film history's ten most influential cinematographers in a survey of the members of the International Cinematographers Guild.-Early life and education:Wexler was born to a Jewish...
'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
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the...
was murdered
Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination
Martin Luther King, Jr., a prominent American leader of the African-American civil rights movement and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, at the age of 39...
in Memphis
Memphis, Tennessee
Memphis is a city in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of Tennessee, and the county seat of Shelby County. The city is located on the 4th Chickasaw Bluff, south of the confluence of the Wolf and Mississippi rivers....
in April; race riots occurred in major cities all over the country. In June 1968, Robert Kennedy
Robert F. Kennedy
Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy , also referred to by his initials RFK, was an American politician, a Democratic senator from New York, and a noted civil rights activist. An icon of modern American liberalism and member of the Kennedy family, he was a younger brother of President John F...
was assassinated
Robert F. Kennedy assassination
The assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, a United States Senator and brother of assassinated President John F. Kennedy, took place shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968, in Los Angeles, California...
in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
.
Distributors considered Wexler's film controversial; its receiving an 'X' rating delayed its release. In 1970 it was re-rated R. 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'". Obviously, the film struck a nerve, as it was truly a product of the times in which it was made—there was no separating the political climate of the United States and the material in the film.
Other films of the time which attempted, in a more mainstream way, to deal with the antiwar movement and activist demonstrations on college campuses include R. P. M.
R. P. M.
R. P. M. is a 1971 drama film directed by Stanley Kramer, written by Erich Segal and starring Anthony Quinn and Ann-Margret.-Plot:Set against the political turmoil of the 1960s, a leftist college professor is given the job of university president when the previous president is forced out...
, Getting Straight
Getting Straight
Getting Straight is a 1970 American comedy-drama motion picture directed by Richard Rush, released by Columbia Pictures.The story centered upon student politics at a university in the early 1970s, seen through the eyes of non-conformist graduate student Harry Bailey...
, and The Strawberry Statement
The Strawberry Statement (film)
The Strawberry Statement is a 1970 cult film about the counterculture and student revolts of the 1960s, loosely based on the non-fiction book by James Simon Kunen about the Columbia University protests of 1968.-Cast:* Bruce Davison: Simon...
.
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 EbertRoger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
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." 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."
Similarly, in his 1969 review of the film for The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, Vincent Canby
Vincent Canby
Vincent Canby was an American film critic who became the chief film critic for The New York Times in 1969 and reviewed more than 1000 films during his tenure there.-Life and career:...
credits Wexler with presenting his audience with powerful imagery through the use of documentary filmmaking techniques. 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." 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
Guernica (painting)
Guernica is a painting by Pablo Picasso. It was created in response to the bombing of Guernica, Basque Country, by German and Italian warplanes at the behest of the Spanish Nationalist forces, on 26 April 1937, during the Spanish Civil War...
, a picture of America in the process of exploding into fragmented bits of hostility, suspicion, fear and violence." 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
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
."
Harold Blankenship connection
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.External links
- 'Look out Haskell, it's real': The Making of Medium Cool, a 2001 documentary about Medium Cool