Day 69: Titicut Follies

"Titicut Follies" is the most famous film you've never heard of. That's not entirely your fault, being that it is the only film ever to be banned(1967-1992) for reasons not to do with obscenity,immorality, or a threat to national security. In varicolored forms, Titicut Follies is a film that stands on its own.


It documents the lives of inmates at the Bridgewater State Hospital for the criminally insane. Directed by Frederick Wiseman, "Titicut Follies" is an hallmark of his style: No narration,no interviews. And lo, what we do see is what has become ubitiq,devoid of any narrative arc to be imposed. Some of the members are catatonic,most are only periodically washed, and all are force fed and bullied. The searing indictment here is clear: If a society is only as civil as the treatment of the least of its citizens, where do we stand?

Wiseman doesn't hail from any film school, and the "cinema verite" style he exhibits is extremely uncomfortable at times. For example, a prisoner named Jim is harassed by guards. Wiseman follows his naked body through the halls, and into a barber's chair, where he is shaved & cut,finally walking back to his cell bleeding and covering his genitals. Wiseman doesn't really know when to cut. While this leads to fascinating results(who better to keep the camera rolling on than the criminally insane?), it also leaves you feeling somewhat complicit.

It is tempting to hide "Titcut Follies" from audiences, given it's horror. However, that would only seem to reinforce the problem. There are scarier moves, for certain. However, at the back of our minds we know there was an order imposed;there was a script,actors,and drama was heightened in order to elicit the very reactions you feel. "Titicut Follies", on the other hand, is haunting in its neutrality.

At one point in the film, a prisoner makes a prescient remark, when asked about why he has shown no improvement, that the prison has in fact made him worse. What he really longs for, he pleads, is to return to "regular prison." "Titicut Follies" is very Kafakesque, and watching this scene, I couldn't help but recall a story Kafka once penned: "Alas," said the mouse, "the whole world is growing smaller every day. At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and I was glad when I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I must run into." "You only need to change your direction," said the cat, and ate it up.

(There is no trailer for this. It's historically not the most accessible film in the world. Look it up)