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Reviews
Medium Cool (1969)
Superb integration of the political and social aspects inherent in the film medium.
Haskell Wexler's film generated much debate on just where American Cinema was headed upon its release in 1969. Its narrative revolves loosely around the relationship of a TV cameraman and a lower-class widow living in Chicago during the summer of 1968. The true focus of the film is on the Democratic National Convention and its devastating effects on that city during the "long hot summer" it was subjected to. With the care of an expert social journalist Wexler films the riot caused by the civil authority in that city with an unfaltering naturalism that Soviet Realists would kill for. His cinematographic gifts are never called into question as he edits the body of the film with patches of documentary and staged scenes. It's to the credit of the filmmaker that in one section a fellow cameraman has to admonish him as to the danger he is apparently embroiled in as he shoots a sequence. This wonderful play on the reflexivity so rarely admitted in film is reason enough to give this challenging but brilliant work of art a chance to leave its mark on you.
The Chase (1966)
This film (along with Penn's own BONNIE AND CLYDE) is arguably the most important American film of the decade.
Though Arthur Penn has been badmouthing this movie for decades, basically on the basis that final cut was not granted to him, this is a masterpiece of storytelling. Lillian Hellman wrote the script, so you know it has something going for it from the start. This is a tale of smalltown USA gone haywire. Nothing less than an emotional release lever for the nation after the Kennedy assassination, whose implications are gauged with uncanny insight, this film traces betrayal and decay with the skill of a private eye on the hunt for an unfaithful husband. Marlon Brando shines as Sheriff Calder, the moral conscience of the town; but the outstanding performance award goes to the pair of Robert Redford (Bubba Reeves) and Jane Fonda (Anna Reeves). One can't help but ponder how perhaps if their lives would be lifted from the cesspool they find themselves trapped in they may actually attach some meaning to their lives, not letting them waste away like they inevitably will. There are many who were absolutely shocked at the gunning down of Bonnie and Clyde when Penn directed that work in 1967, a mere year later. But the seeds to that bloodbath, from which a steady stream of violent representation has never stopped flowing, is at the end of this film folks. If Samuel Beckett had directed this there couldn't be more existentialist angst attached to it. If you haven't seen this you're definitely missing out.