Medium Cool (1969), written, photographed and directed by Haskell Wexler.
We meet our ethically challenged Chicago news photographer at the scene of a traffic accident. Only after he and his partner get their footage do they call for an ambulance as they drive away, leaving the victim to survive or not.
He has a girlfriend (early sex and nudity here) but really warms up to a mother and son from West Virginia. Where's Dad? We are variously told "in Vietnam" and "dead" and "just took off". His heart begins to soften.
What really gets him going is the discovery that his footage is being turned over to the police and FBI so they can investigate anti-war and civil rights groups. His rage gets him fired.
Then it is August 1968 and time for the fateful demonstration- and riot-heavy Democratic National Convention.
A remarkable film experiment combining fact and fiction. It is hard to separate the actors from the citizens or the dramatizations from actual events. Verna Bloom walks completely through the demonstrations and "police riot" (real) while searching for her son (drama).
Criticisms:
Some vestigial plot elements are never developed: a black cab driver who turns in a packet of money, and the suspicion that money is being channeled into weapons for militants.
The police riot shown is in broad daylight on a fine summer day. Most of the violence was after dark, which would have been even more wild, but no doubt very dangerous to film.
The anti-war and civil rights campaigns were intertwined in those days, and Wexler gives black people camera time to explain they are tired of being unseen and misunderstood and are getting angry about it.
Notes:
They were allowed to the film the riot-control training before the convention. The training was specifically for the convention.
I had seen young Robert Forster in The Stalking Moon (1968) but did not realize how handsome and studly he was.
His role was originally intended for John Cassavetes.
Verna Bloom said the film did not help her career much because everyone thought she was an amateur. Such are the risks of a natural performance during real events.
Bloom and Marianna Hill were together again in High Plains Drifter (1973).
Filming took place both before and after the Robert Kennedy assassination; it's part of the story.
The demonstration and riots were part of the screenplay. Wexler knew they would happen at the convention that year, as did many other people.
Wexler directed documentaries and short films, but little else in the way of features. He is best known as a cinematographer: Coming Home (1978), In the Heat of the Night (1967), The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966).
Available on Blu-ray from Criterion. Two commentary tracks:
A 2001 conversation with Wexler, editor Paul Golding and Marianna Hill. Lots of surprising details about who was an actor and who not, and real life incidents picked up for the film.
Reflections by Paul Cronin, maker of the documentary Look Out, Haskell, It's Real: The Making of 'Medium Cool' (2001) (which is included on the Blu-ray). He tends toward theoretical analysis founded on Marshall McLuhan and other academics.