And that is exactly what he accomplished. His early efforts at documentary filmmaking, which were enabled by a group of collaborators who would become legendary in their own rights as documentary filmmakers, namely D.A. Pennebaker (Dont Look Back, 1967), Richard Leacock (1 P.M., 1971), and Albert Maysles (Gimme Shelter, 1970), changed the way documentaries were made. Out of Drew’s efforts was born the cinéma vérité or direct cinema movement, which sought to capture life unadorned. By cobbling together different technologies to free the camera from its tripod and synch it to a tape-recorder so that live sound could be captured simultaneously with the images, Drew was able to get the camera right into the flow of life and record it as if he were the proverbial fly on the wall.

And, while Drew produced and directed dozens of documentaries over his life, many of which were made for his company Robert Drew & Associates, he is probably best known for the quartet of films he made about John F. Kennedy, starting with Primary (1960), which followed Kennedy and his Democratic rival Hubert Humphrey over a five-day period during a particularly crucial early primary in Wisconsin. Drew had recently been set up as the head of a production unit at the Time-Life station in Minneapolis, which for the first time afforded him a budget and access to equipment (he had been working as a correspondent for Life for the previous 10 years, where he made his first documentaries as promotional pieces for stories in upcoming issues). He managed to convince both Kennedy and Humphrey to give him and his crew complete access to their campaigns, resulting in a film of impressive political immersion. While we see the two candidates in their public personas—giving speeches, shaking hands, meeting with constituents, giving television interviews—we also see them in their more unguarded moments behind closed doors, something that today’s heavily managed political candidates would never allow. Primary is both very much ahead of its time—network executives didn’t want to air it because it looked so different from what viewers were used to—and of its time, capturing an indelible moment when Kennedy’s campaign began to break free of the shackles of doubt that a young, wealthy, Catholic from the East Coast could win over the nation. Ironically, with our wealth of media and access to information, political candidates have become more and more closed off, so that a portrait like the one we see in Drew’s film would simply never happen, at least not with high-profile Presidential candidates.

Kennedy saw the film, and he was so pleased with it that he allowed Drew and his production team to follow him for a day in the White House early in his Presidency, resulting in Adventures on the New Frontier (1961), which was broadcast on ABC as part of the series ABC Close Up! Again, the level of access Drew was afforded to a sitting President is astounding, which allows us to see Kennedy functioning in all his various roles—as ceremonial head of state, as command and chief of the armed forces, as a legislator. Throughout the film we see him working with various people in his administration, and we get to hear snippets of conversations about the economy and nuclear disarmament and the growth of communism in Africa. There is a compelling immediacy to the film that is exactly what Drew wanted, to the point that we begin to forget that there are cameramen and sound recorders in the room with Kennedy (at one point during a conversation Kennedy, who is smoking a cigar, accidentally drops the ash in his lap, a small, but profoundly human moment). We follow along with him and others as they walk in and out of the corridors of power, giving us an all-too-fleeting glimpse into the work-a-day world of the most powerful person on the planet.

Even more compelling than that film is Drew’s follow-up, Crisis (1962), shot two years later. While most of the activity in Adventures on the New Frontier is relatively staid, the subject matter in Crisis, befitting its title, is quite incendiary, as Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, his attorney general, try to deal with Alabama Governor George Wallace’s refusal to allow the University of Alabama to be racially integrated according to federal law. Drew and his team spend equal time with the Kennedy White House and Governor Wallace, who in one unadorned moment speaks bluntly of why separation of the races is a good thing and why he is committing no sin in refusing to allow two black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, to enroll at the university. Robert Kennedy is the real star of the film, though, as the majority of the weight falls on his shoulders as he negotiates the delicate balance of enforcing federal law on a recalcitrant state without turning it into a boondoggle (a major point of discussion is how to physically remove Wallace from the doorway, should it come to that). The potential for violence is always there, especially as they weigh the benefits of calling in federal troops and federalizing the National Guard (essentially turning Wallace’s troops into Kennedy’s). It’s a pivotal moment in the Civil Rights era, one that had the potential for major disaster, and Drew’s camera, whether it is hovering in Wallace’s office, or in Robert Kennedy’s dining room, or in the Oval Office, captured its tense essence.

Drew’s final film about Kennedy, Faces of November (1964), made just after his assassination in November of 1963, is the shortest of the four and also the most experimental. It eschews voice-over narration and even audible dialogue from those on screen as it documents the day of Kennedy’s funeral. It is a somber, disquieting film, made all the more powerful by Drew’s focus on various faces, both famous (Jacqueline Kennedy, John Kennedy Jr., Lyndon Johndon) and not. The faces we see are long and drawn, streaked with tears and still aghast at the violent death of the President. Even though we don’t hear a word, the film is suffused with a sense of grief and doubt, the very opposite of the upbeat portraits Drew had earlier captured of one of the 20th century’s most dynamic political personalities. Viewing the four films in chronological order gives one a powerful sense of both the passage of time and the inalterable flow of history, as we watch Kennedy grow from an upstart primary candidate, to a young President just finding his feet, to a seasoned President negotiating a potential national crisis, to a body hidden inside a flag-draped coffin, reduced to a symbol of that terrible, nagging sense of what might have been.

Copyright ©2016 James Kendrick

Thoughts? E-mail James Kendrick

All images copyright © The Film Foundation / The Criterion Collection