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Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9786303334288
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
ISBN: 6303334288
Label: Paramount
Manufacturer: Paramount
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Paramount
Release Date: April 16, 1995
Running Time: 111 minutes
Sales Rank: 24938
Studio: Paramount
Theatrical Release Date: 1969
Related Items:
Editorial Review:
Amazon.com:
Medium Cool is an almost impossible oddity: director Haskel Wexler wanted to shoot a fictional, narrative film wherein actors mingled with real people in an uncontrolled social environment. With that in mind, he began filming a movie about racial tensions in Chicago during the weeks prior to the 1968 Democratic National Convention, on the assumption that there would be a riot there. Then he brought his cast, crew, and camera to the scene of the proposed mayhem, and waited. . . and lo and behold, civil disorder broke out. It's intensely strange to see actors, playing characters, interacting in a real-life situation with real cops and real hippies fighting and running about. This is made stranger still by the story, about a reporter covering the growing unrest in the black ghettos of the city who discovers that the FBI may be in cahoots with his network. In preparing his script, Wexler assumed that the riot would be racial, but in fact it turned out that most of the rioters were white, so the final scenes seem to interrupt the narrative and make the film an odd pastiche and a commentary on the lack of connection between politics and life. Perhaps more of a curiosity than a wholly successful film, Medium Cool is still worth seeing for its striking footage and unprecedented combination of the real and the imaginary. --James DiGiovanna
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Medium Cool
Haskell Wexler's one-of-a-kind film seamlessly blends narrative and documentary forms, as the actors actually played their scenes as the Chicago riots were exploding all around them. Thus "Medium Cool" attains a heightened sense of tension, immediacy, and danger, as the line blurs between drama and reality. Evocative and extremely well-played by Forster and Bloom, this is a fascinating time-capsule for the ages. Look for Peter Boyle as an impassioned right-winger.
Rating: - Excellent Counterculture Cinema
`Medium Cool' was directed, scripted, produced and filmed in 1968 by Haskell Wexler who had had success the previous year working as a cinematographer for Norman Jewison (In the Heat Of The Night, 1968) and Mike Nichols (`Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?', 1967). He would also later work with George Lucas, Hal Ashby, Milos Forman and Terence Mallick in the 70s shooting important films of the `New Hollywood'.
Of all the films considered to be counterculture works this has to rank as ... Read More
Rating:  - Incredible time capsule of late 60s Chicago
This film is a must-have for anyone interested in the sociology, history, and physical development of Chicago. Done in a neo-realist style using a mixture of professional and amateur actors, the story revolves around real scenes shot during the 1968 Democratic Convention and the "police riot" that ensued. The deus-ex-machina ending is a bit disappointing, but the street scenes and footage are mind-blowing for students of Chicago and its history.
Rating: - Something very special...
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 ... Read More
Rating: - I had to see it twice!
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 ... Read More
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Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9786303334288
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
ISBN: 6303334288
Label: Paramount
Manufacturer: Paramount
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Paramount
Release Date: April 16, 1995
Running Time: 111 minutes
Sales Rank: 24938
Studio: Paramount
Theatrical Release Date: 1969