Titicut Follies (1967)

Titicut Follies is a 1967 American documentary film directed by Frederick Wiseman, about the treatment of inmates/patients at Bridgewater State Hospital for the criminally insane, a Massachusetts Correctional Institution in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. The title is taken from a talent show put on by the hospital’s inmates. (The talent show was named after the Wampanoag word for the nearby Taunton River.) In 1967 the film won awards in Germany and Italy. Wiseman made a number of such films examining social institutions (e.g. hospitals, police, schools, etc.) in the United States.

Titicut Follies portrays the existence of occupants of Bridgewater, some of them catatonic, holed up in unlit cells, and only periodically washed. It also depicts inmates/patients required to strip naked publicly, force feeding, and indifference and bullying on the part of many of the institution’s staff.

Titicut Follies was the beginning of the documentary career of Fred Wiseman, a Boston-born lawyer turned filmmaker. He originally took his law classes from Boston University to the institution for educational purposes and had “wanted to do a film there.” He began calling the superintendent of the facility looking for permission to film a year prior to production. Wiseman had previously produced The Cool World, a 1960 film based on Warren Miller’s novel and took that experience to inform his desire to direct. He drafted a proposal that was verbally agreed to by the superintendent, which later came into question when the film began distribution. Following that agreement filming did commence and while on location Wiseman recorded the sound and directed the cameraman with his microphone or hand directions. He hired John Marshall as his cameraman, an established ethnographic filmmaker.

Just before the film was due to be shown at the 1967 New York Film Festival, the government of Massachusetts tried to get an injunction banning its release. The government claimed that the film violated the patients’ privacy and dignity. Although Wiseman received permission from all the people portrayed or the hospital superintendent (their legal guardian), Massachusetts claimed that this permission could not take the place of valid release forms from the inmates. It also claimed that Wiseman breached an “oral contract” giving the state government editorial control over the film. However, a New York state court allowed the film to be shown. In 1968, however, Massachusetts Superior Court judge Harry Kalus ordered the film yanked from distribution and called for all copies to be destroyed, citing the state’s concerns about violations of the patients’ privacy and dignity.

Wiseman appealed to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which in 1969 allowed it to be shown only to doctors, lawyers, judges, health-care professionals, social workers, and students in these and related fields. Wiseman appealed to the United States Supreme Court, which refused to hear the case.

Wiseman has pointed out that he received permission from all of the people portrayed in the film or else their legal guardian, in this case the superintendent of Bridgewater. He believes that the government of Massachusetts, concerned that the film portrayed a state institution in a bad light, intervened to protect its own reputation. The state intervened after a social worker in Minnesota wrote to Governor John Volpe expressing shock at a scene involving a naked man being taunted by a guard.

The dispute marked the first known instance in the history of the American film industry that a film was banned from general distribution for reasons other than obscenity, immorality or national security. It was also the first time that Massachusetts recognized a right to privacy at the state level. Wiseman stated that, “The obvious point that I was making was that the restriction of the court was a greater infringement of civil liberties than the film was an infringement on the liberties of the inmates.”

Little changed until 1987, when the families of seven inmates who died at the hospital sued the hospital and state. Steven Schwartz represented one of the inmates. Schwartz’s client who was “restrained for 2 ½ months and given six psychiatric drugs at vastly unsafe levels - - choked to death because he could not swallow his food.” Schwartz claims that, “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 fact, “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.” In addition, “the film may have also influenced the closing of the institution featured in the film.”

side note: also see, Willowbrook State Hospital: The Last Great Disgrace 

7 months agoOctober 1, 2012 2 notes documentaries film psychiatric care psychology mental institutions titicut follies willowbrook medical massachusetts frederick wiseman bridgewater state hospital 60s ny film festival mental health institution healthcare criminality abuse