Primary

“What the fuck is twittah” - JFK

HAIRCUTS! GLASSES! KINDA BORING! THIS MOVIE HAS IT ALL!

Pretty interesting to see what a campaign was like back then. The candidates seemed so much more open and direct, and security was so lax.

The behind the scenes glimpses are interesting, as is the historical perspective on how these two candidates worked the primary process. Overall, though, the current media coverage overload of these matters makes most of the film's uniqueness old hat.

Interesting document. Politicking has lost an awful lot of dignity, at least in the public sphere, is one observation I would make based on this alone. The candidates' respective little theme songs stand out as bizarrely antiquated.

Drew makes clear in his groundbreakingly intimate documentary film that while Hubert H. Humphrey was not without his charm - a friendly version of Jim W. Gettys - he was no chance against the massive force of John F. Kennedy's charismatic authority. However, J.F.K. stills appears as a 'dead man walking', knowing what we do about November 22, 1963. Jacqueline Kennedy has never looked more angelic, a stark contrast to what was to come three years later.

this one does not belong to cinema verité movement as it's been suggested in the summary but it is the first sync sound major documentary of american direct cinema.

Unless you saw this in America at the time it was produced (which, admittedly, a lot of people probably have), it just ends up being quite ... boring, doesn't it?

This documentary isn't especially robust or hard-hitting. Indeed, it's gentle, cinema verite stylings prevent it from being especially revelatory. It's accomplishment is simpler: it stands as a nifty time capsule, a moving snapshot of a time when politics, even presidential politics, was much simpler than it is now. There's a casualness to both men here, a sense that it's just two well-meaning guys both applying for the same job. Drew's camera absorbs it all.