Titicut Follies (1967)

User Rating:

8.1/10   

Director:

Frederick Wiseman

Release Date:

4 September 1992 (Australia)

Genre:

Documentary | Drama

Tagline:

Don't turn your back on this film... if you value your mind or your life.

Plot:

Plot Keywords:

Paranoia | Old Man | Insanity | Prison Asylum | Paranoid Schizophrenia

Awards:

1 win

Runtime:

84 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

USA:Unrated | Australia:M | USA:(Banned) (distribution blocked by legal order, 1967-1992)

Filming Locations:

State Prison for the Criminally Insane - 20 Administration Road, Bridgewater, Massachusetts, USA

Trivia:

The only American film banned from release for reasons other than obscenity or national security, Titicut Follies was filmed inside the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Bridgewater, a prison hospital for the criminally insane. After the Commonwealth of Massachusetts sued the filmmakers, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the film constituted was an invasion of inmate privacy and ordered the withdrawal of the film from circulation.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000)

The other Bridgewater State

Not exactly the kind of movie for which star-ranking seems appropriate.

As a professor at Bridgewater State College, I learned about this movie in a peculiar way: when considering a job at the college in 1997, a web search of the town name mainly yielded comments about this movie.

Once I started teaching here, I learned that students did not like for us to say "Bridgewater State" because their friends back home (mostly other towns in the general region south of Boston) would always tease them about being inmates/patients at Bridgewater State Hospital. So I always say "BSC" or the full name of the college.

I should say that I watched most but not all of the film. It was disturbing but not horrific. I think that the lack of dignity afforded the inmates/patients is what bothered me the most. I blame this as much on the director as on the institution itself.

I like to think that 40 years later, the movie had the desired effect, though, of bringing attention to a chronically unattended problem: the treatment of mentally ill people in general and the criminally insane in particular.

One last thing, as I write this while sitting in my home about three miles from the site -- in nine years of living here and being very active in the community, I have yet to meet an employee of the prison complex (which includes the State Hospital and regular prisons). I rarely hear about the movie, nor do I hear discussions of what the place might be like today.