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Aficionados of cinema vérité and direct cinema will be delighted to know that the Tribeca Film Festival is showing Robert Drew’s new movie A President to Remember: In the Company of John F. Kennedy. In it, Drew looks back at his 1960 documentary, Primary, which follows Kennedy’s bid to win the Democratic Party nomination for President. The folks at Tribeca are calling it a “timely update of the Kennedy mythos.” Indeed. Excitement over a young, handsome senatorial nominee does seem very apropos right about now.
Drew (not young or in politics) was something of a pioneer. Taking the methods he learned as a journalist for Time magazine in the 1940s and 1950s, and utilizing new, lightweight camera equipment (however laughably clunky it might be by today’s standards), he developed his own, unique style. He admitted only a debt to Alfred Eisenstaedt (the German-American photojournalist) but not to Dziga Vertov or Jean Rouch, the godfathers of cinema vérité. Drew's so-called direct cinema captures, or attempts to capture, real life unfolding; more often than not, the film takes as its subject a political imperative. At its finest, it’s cinema vérité minus the stage management.
For Primary, Drew had complete access to JFK’s campaign, as well as that of his chief Democratic rival, Hubert Humphrey (who eventually became Lyndon Johnson’s vice president and the party’s 1968 nominee). We’re used to the idea of this kind of footage now—cameramen, bloggers and reporters all vie for as much access as they can get—but it was groundbreaking at the time. For direct cinematographers, it’s important that the camera be as unobtrusive as possible, so that, eventually, the subject relaxes and forgets he's being recorded. That’s the goal, at least.
In his 1960 effort, Drew captured what a politician and his potential First Lady look like just before they realize that they perhaps ought to keep their guard up. For instance, Primary contains a famous scene in which Jackie Kennedy is on a podium, facing a large crowd. Drew focuses not on her face, but on her white-gloved hands, fiddling nervously behind her back. He then cuts to the side of her the audience sees—her radiant smile.
A President to Remember: In the Company of John F. Kennedy screens at Tribeca starting Apr 26.
