Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment (1963) is a documentary made up of pairs: two students trying to integrate the University of Alabama, James Hood and Vivian Malone (top), two political opponents at home in the morning before work (Robert Kennedy and George Wallace, second and third stills), and two sides of a confrontation between George Wallace and Nicholas Katzenbach (bottom two stills). Much of the action depicts simultaneous phone conversations, shot in Washington and Alabama, featuring anxious middle-aged white men. The filmmakers on this early example of observational cinema muscle included Richard Leacock and D.A. Pennebaker.
