“I directed the best political movie never released.” Filmmaker Haskell Wexler thus described Medium Cool , his violent feature set during Chicago’s riotous 1968 Democratic National Convention. His movie opened (sort of) exactly 55 years ago this week.
The Paramount release won ardent support from critics and (briefly) from ticket buyers but was renounced by leaders of the Democratic Party and the Chicago police. Their criticism was short-lived because the negative would quickly disappear. A Paramount spokesman was reluctant to confirm it had ever been made.
The mysteries of Medium Cool seemed relevant to cineastes this week as history threatened to repeat itself in Chicago. As in 1968, the chaos at the Democratic convention would be triggered by an overseas conflict – Gaza now, Vietnam then. But the police this week showed they’d learned from the bitter lessons of ’68 when violence jeopardized the political process and the election itself.
Despite forecasts of a turnout of 30,000 protesters and intense coverage by Fox News, the turnout was meager this week (perhaps 5,000 at most) as were the arrest totals. The convention itself won applause and strong ratings for its electric energy and star power . But not in 1968.
Medium Cool was in fact a love story about a photojournalist who fell in love with a war widow, their affair disrupted by political violence – as was the movie itself. Wexler, who wrote and directed Medium Cool , was a brilliant cinematographer and .