Back To Titicut
A Look Back At Frederick Wiseman’s Titicut Follies
Mondo Contributor Matt Sanborn looks back at the history and aftermath of Wiseman’s landmark and controversial documentary on a now infamous mental institution.
Written By: Matt Sanborn
It’s hard to believe a place like this ever existed: A hellish community not all that far away from a well-known teachers’ college where the Commonwealth of Massachusetts dumped its most violent, most disturbed and most pitiful residents to be ground down before being thrown back into society.
A place that few had heard about until 1966 when film maker Fredrick Wiseman brought his cameras into Bridgewater State Prison for the Criminally Insane and filmed whatever swam in front of his lens. Like a camera attached to a submarine, what was brought back to the surface for the public to see was almost as alien and hostile as anything living on the bottom of the ocean.
What emerged was a film so shocking that it was suppressed from public viewing by the Supreme Court of Massachusetts for 25 years. Only in 1991 was the film finally released for general consumption to an audience which would be drowned in the film’s overwhelming tone of depression and helplessness.
Wiseman had previously been a lawyer who taught at Boston University and took his classes there. Seeing the abject debasement of the people kept inside, he knew he wanted to do a film. The poster for the film summed the tone up simply: “Don’t turn your back to this film… If you value your mind or your life.” With a drawn image of a naked man kneeling, his arms in the air in an “I surrender” position.
Shot in black and white with no narration, the film begins with inmates and staff singing in the hospital’s annual talent show, the Titicut Follies. These scenes are intercut with an unblinking eye as prisoners scream, are shaved by wisecracking and head fucking guards, political debates are lead by schizophrenics, boards of review who care little what the prisoners say, and naked men walk around talking gibberish laced with pidgin English.
There are three memorable scenes that stand out above all others, all involving the man who becomes almost the villain of the film, Dr. Ross. Thickly accented, his arrogance is palpable, comparable only to his complete disregard for his charges.
Early in the film Ross is scene questioning a child rapist. He asks the man about his masturbation habits, and then drifts into a creepier line of questioning about what type of breasts he prefers. Without any narration, we are left to wonder if the doctor is doing a thorough job, or simply getting his rocks off.
The second incredibly memorable moments come when the doctor, who throughout the movie becomes more and more the villain, refuses to listen to a seemingly competent patient explaining the place is making him worse than when he arrived. The battle between the two runs throughout the film, though one is never to learn what happens to the inmate.
The third is the most infamous. In a multi-cut collage an elderly prisoner is force-fed through the nose with a rubber tube, intercut with his body being prepared by an in-house mortician. Dr. Ross, who comes off as a controlling sadistic individual barely competent, seems to enjoy this process which reminds one of the embalming processes of ancient Egyptians preparing mummies for their eternal slumber. The doctor speaking in a heavy accent smokes and jokes as he holds the rubber tube and asks for a whisky.
Those scenes were the ones causing the outrage in the state. It is hard to believe that the superintendent, who is never interviewed on camera, would agree to allow cameras into the place, but he did. Over 10,000 outside visitors came through the doors the year the movie was filmed, no one seemed to care. This film alone, the Commonwealth knew, would drive public opinion against the place, cost jobs and create great embarrassment.
Right before the film was shown at the 1967 New York Film Festival the Commonwealth of Massachusetts attempted to squash its release, moving to obtain an injunction claiming it violated the prisoners’ rights of privacy and their dignity. A New York court allowed the film to be shown. In 1968 though the Commonwealth ruled that the film must be pulled from distribution and all copies and negatives destroyed. This marked the first time a film had been denied release for reasons other than obscenity or national security. A dangerous precedent had been established, and the film set dormant for years.
A two decade court battle then began. Wiseman achieved a small victory in 1969 when the Commonwealth courts allowed the film to be shown to social workers, doctors and other professionals as a teaching tool. The director had thrown too much into this movie, and was too passionate about it to let it die a slow death. He continued to wage a legal fight to have a general release.
In 1987 the hospital was sued by the families of seven inmates who had died due to improper, and in some cases, sadistic care, by the staff. Steven Schwartz, a lawyer for one of the families stated: “There is a direct connection between the decision not to show that film publicly and my client dying 20 years later, and a whole host of other people dying in between… In the years since Mr. Wiseman made Titicut Follies, most of the nation’s big mental institutions have been closed or cut back by court orders.”
An extensive search for the inmates who had been filmed was undertaken the next year, and more court room time followed. Several patients claimed the film had harmed them, but in 1991 Superior Court Judge Andrew Meyer allowed the film to be released to the general public stating that enough time had passed and the First Amendment held more weight than the inmates’ right to privacy.
On April 6, 1993 the film was shown on PBS, with reviews being positive; the NY Times ran the headline of its review: “An Unhealthy Hospital Stars in “Titicut Follies.” Over 25 years later, the film was now out for the public to see. An unflinching, non-judgmental film unlike anything the MTV generation had ever witnessed.
These types of films aren’t made anymore. Without narration or center character focus the film throws the viewer right into the middle of this grainy, colorless hell, where the difference between staff and patient is hard to discern sometimes. Wiseman brought his crew into the establishment over four weeks in April/May of 1966 and lets the film tell the story. There are no quick cut-aways, jagged angles and bouncing shots. It is all too steady and all too long for most to take. It never judges; this is truly a thinking person’s piece.
It is a staggeringly powerful, mind numbingly awful time capsule of the way a society treats its outsiders. One leaved the film wondering how many lives of already damaged people may have been saved, or vastly improved, had this film come out on time.
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