Titicut Follies (1967) on Netflix
NR19671h 24mDocumentary
Bridgewater State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Massachusetts holds patient-inmates in barren cells. Guards, social workers and psychiatrists oversee the inmates and their treatment.
- Watch on NetflixThis title is not on Netflix right now. Please check back later for updates.
- Watch on Prime
- Watch on NordVPN
- Netflix4.4/5
- IMDb7.7/105,857 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes100%
Clip
Plot summary
Bridgewater State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Massachusetts houses patient-inmates in barren cells. The documentary observes them over twenty-nine days of filming, and around 80,000 feet of film were shot. It shows men who are infrequently bathed, sometimes forced to strip naked in front of others, and force-fed. Guards, social workers and psychiatrists move through the wards, and the film records indifference and bullying from staff. The title comes from a talent show held at the hospital. The camera stays with the inmates and the routines imposed on them, watching the daily life of the institution without intervention. It was made in black and white.
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Titicut Follies (1967)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The Massachusetts court fight over this documentary marked the first known instance of a film being banned from general American distribution for reasons other than obscenity, immorality or national security, and it was also the first time Massachusetts state law recognized a right to privacy.
- In 1968, Massachusetts Superior Court judge Harry Kalus went so far as to order every copy of the film recalled and destroyed, citing concerns that it violated the privacy and dignity of the hospital's patients.
- Attorney Steven Schwartz argued that suppressing the film had real consequences, saying there was "a direct connection" between the decades-long ban and the death of his own client, an inmate who had been restrained for two-and-a-half months and given six psychiatric drugs at unsafe levels before choking to death because he could not swallow food.
- Director Frederick Wiseman spent about a year editing 80,000 feet of footage into the final 84-minute film, and he did it in secret, working after hours in the editing rooms at WGBH-TV.
- Massachusetts moved to suppress the film after a social worker in Minnesota wrote a letter to governor John Volpe expressing shock at a scene showing a guard taunting a naked patient.
- Wiseman appealed to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which in 1969 allowed the film to be shown only to doctors, lawyers, judges, health-care professionals, social workers and students in these and related fields.
