“The success of Haskell Wexler's first feature, Medium Cool, happily indicates that the era of the cameraman-director has arrived, and with this film, an entirely new approach to fictional documentary. Critics and audiences have been astonished by the use of an infamous American incident-the riots in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic Convention-as a background for film drama. Here, it is often difficult to separate fact from staged events, because Wexler did everything on location, carrying his camera (he is a veritable disciple of Dziga Vertov), aware of the dizzyingly hazardous confrontations between demonstrators and police. (As a cinematographer, Wexler) is internationally famous as a master of light and shadow. . . . (As a director, he) has added a dimension of truth to motion pictures that has not existed before in quite this extraordinary way.”