Titicut Follies

Banned & Censored Cinema

Titicut Follies

Director: Frederick Wiseman, USA, 1967, 87 min.

The film is a stark and graphic portrayal of the conditions that existed at the State Prison for the Criminally Insane at Bridgewater, Massachusetts. Titicut Follies documents the various ways the inmates are treated by the guards, social workers and psychiatrists. --Zipporah Films website

Banned in Massachusetts, 1968.

Harvey Silvergate, president of the Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts (CLUM), described the Titicut Follies case by saying that "twenty years ago the state judiciary for the first (and still the only) time in modern American history issued an unprecedented order, a prior restraint injunction that suppressed a motion picture neither legally obscene nor a 'clear and present danger' to the national security" ("President's Column: Titicut Follies Revisited," The Docket [CLUM] 17, no. 4, 1987)--Benson and Anderson, Reality Fictions: The Films of Frederick Wiseman (1989)

In the film's opening sequence inmates sing "Strike Up the Band" as part of "Titicut Follies"--the institution's annual variety show.

This inmate responds to the prison psychiatrist's questions about molesting children. Inmate: "The way I am right now, if I have to stay like this, I'd just as soon go to jail and stay there."

Supreme Court Justice Harlan observes, Titicut Follies "is at once a scathing indictment of the inhumane conditions that prevailed at the time of the film and an undeniable infringement of the privacy of the inmates filmed, who are shown nude and engaged in acts that would unquestionably embarrass an individual of normal sensitivity."

Medium shot of Dr. Ross, the psychiatrist, and Vladimir, "Sane" inmate, in courtyard. Vladimir attempts to convince Dr. Ross that he has been falsely classified as schizophrenic based on erroneous tests and that he is fit to return to a nonpsychiatric prison.

The psychiatrist force feeds an inmate on a hunger strike (who later dies). Wiseman creates a montage of shots, including close-ups of the faces of the inmate and the psychiatrist and of the face of the inmate's corpse as it is shaved. During the force feeding, the psychiatrist smokes.

REQUIRED READINGS & WEBSITES

• Liz Ellsworth, "Titicut Follies: Synopsis, Shot List, Credits and Notes", Frederick Wiseman: A Guide to References and Resources (G.K. Hall & Co., 1979), course reader

• Edward de Grazia and Roger K. Newman, "Titicut Follies", Banned Films: Movies, Censors and the First Amendment (NY: R.R. Bowker Co., 1982), course reader

• Dawn B. Sova, "Titicut Follies", Forbidden Films: Censorship Histories of 125 Motion Pictures (NY: Checkmark Books, an imprint of Facts On File, Inc., 2001), course reader

• Alan Westin, "'You Start Off With a Bromide': Wiseman on Film and Civil Liberties", Frederick Wiseman, Thomas R. Atkins, ed. (Monarch Press, 1976), course reader

• "Elliot Richardson on Titicut Follies", Frederick Wiseman, Thomas R. Atkins, ed. (Monarch Press, 1976), course reader

• Carolyn Anderson and Thomas W. Benson, "Direct Cinema and the Myth of Informed Consent: The Case of Titicut Follies", Image Ethics: The Moral Rights of Subjects in Photographs, Film, and Television, Larry Gross, et al. ed. (Oxford University Press, 1988), course reader