Titicut Follies (1967)
Zipporah Films, YLE

Description

Frederick Wiseman is among America's foremost documentary filmmakers. The recipient of many awards, including three Emmys, Wiseman has made more than thirty feature-length documentaries during a career that has spanned five decades. Together, these films provide a fascinating chronicle of American social and institutional life.

Tags

1960s, Psychiatry, USA, Massachusetts

Collected reviews and ratings

10 The Documentary Blog | Jay C

In fact, this entire movie is full of photography so surreal and mind blowing; it’s crazy to think it’s actually real. Wiseman’s direct cinema approach ends up naturally producing gorgeously disturbing images that are pure works of art.
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10 DVD Talk | Chris Neilson

The first film by attorney-turned-filmmaker Frederick Wiseman, Titicut Follies, was a landmark achievement in cinéma-vérité, an incitement of the mental health system so powerful that the authorities felt compelled to quash it, and a record for the ages, lest we ever forget.
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10 Reverse Shot online | Joanne Nucho

Using cinematic language that leads a viewer to believe that the viewpoint of the camera is an objective one, Wiseman is able to establish the film’s gaze at a point above the psychiatrists, and include them within it. In this way, the privacy that is being violated is actually that of the act of confinement itself. The activities that take place within the confinement have been exposed for what they are—a raw abuse of power, a disenfranchisement of the human rights of the inmates, and a realization of a totalitarian dictatorship within the walls of a public institution.
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9.0 Film Threat | Phil Hall

... even today this production generates controversy for its contents and the manner in which it was created. Time has not diminished its emotional impact – it is still among the most disturbing films ever created – but it does allow for a fresh examination of what Wiseman presented and (more importantly, at least to this writer) what was not presented.
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8.8 Chicago Sun-Times | Roger Ebert

"Titicut Follies" is one of the most despairing documentaries I have ever seen; more immediate than fiction because these people are real; more savage than satire because it seems to be neutral.
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8.3 Time Out | JWin

The film is often extremely difficult to watch and was, for a long time, nearly impossible to see. The Massachusetts authorities suppressed Titicut for a quarter century, arguing that it violated the privacy of the inmates - a risible claim, as it's painfully clear that these men had no rights at all.
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7.5 Austin Chronicle | Kathleen Maher

ascinating, if slightly dated documentary about conditions at the Bridgeport Mental Hospital. Wiseman filmed conditions in the hospital with a bare minimum of crew and equipment resulting in a devastatingly candid view of life behind the high walls of a state mental hospital for the criminally insane.
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7.0 filmcritic.com | Christopher Null

Graphic and deeply disturbing, this grainy black & white work isn't for everyone, but Frederick Wiseman's insights into the cold truth of the crazy-folk prison system is one film that any fan of film and history truly needs to seek out.
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0.0 New York Times | Vincent Canby

The result is an extraordinarily candid picture of a modern Bedlam, where the horrors are composed of indifference and patronizing concern. The concern of the filmmakers, however, and of the men who originally allowed the film to be made, is very real indeed.
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