Titicut Follies (film)
"Titicut Follies" is a groundbreaking documentary film directed by Frederick Wiseman, released in 1967. This film is notable for its cinema verité style, providing a raw and unfiltered glimpse into the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Bridgewater. It serves as both a critical exposé of the conditions within the institution and a thoughtful examination of authority and its implications on human dignity.
The film’s release was mired in controversy, as state officials sought to prevent its distribution, arguing that it violated the privacy of inmates who were either unconsenting or deemed incompetent. Wiseman contended that he had obtained the necessary consents and highlighted the state's interest in protecting its reputation over the welfare of the incarcerated individuals. Over the years, "Titicut Follies" faced numerous legal challenges, navigating complex First and Fourth Amendment rights issues, leading to a series of court decisions regarding its exhibition.
Despite these challenges, "Titicut Follies" eventually gained broader recognition and was broadcast on public television in 1993, more than two decades after its initial release. The film remains a significant work in documentary filmmaking, inviting discussions about ethics, power dynamics, and the treatment of vulnerable populations.
Titicut Follies (film)
Type of work: Film
Released: 1967
Director: Frederick Wiseman (1930- )
Subject matter: Documentary about a state prison hospital for the criminally insane
Significance: Attempts by the state of Massachusetts to ban this film for invading the privacy of patients led to an important court ruling balancing the rights of free expression and privacy of filmed subjects
Titicut Follies is the first in a distinguished series of cinema verité documentaries about American institutions produced and directed by Frederick Wiseman. Photographed by John Marshall in 1966, it is both a shocking exposé of conditions at Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Bridgewater and a meditation on power and control. Its production required permission of state officials, who later went to court to prevent its release on the grounds that Wiseman had invaded the privacy of unconsenting or incompetent inmates and had violated an oral contract to allow state officials control over the final edit. Wiseman denied giving the state any such editorial control, however, and claimed that he had the oral consent of all subjects filmed or the consent of the prison staff to whom he looked for determinations of competency. He also argued that the state was more interested in protecting its reputation, and that of its officials, than in guarding the privacy of the men, whom it incarcerated, neglected, and abused at Bridgewater.
An attorney himself, Wiseman claimed First Amendment protection for his documentation of newsworthy activities filmed at a tax-supported institution.
Wiseman’s claims of First Amendment rights met with vastly different results in a series of court decisions—two from the same judge—between 1967 and 1991. A judge in a New York federal court found Wiseman’s First Amendment argument convincing and allowed the screening of Titicut Follies at the 1967 New York Film Festival. After a highly publicized and contentious legislative hearing regarding the film, the case of Commonwealth v. Wiseman was heard in a Massachusetts equity court. Superior Court judge Harry Kalus considered Titicut Follies “a crass piece of commercialism . . . excessively preoccupied with nudity,” and ruled to ban the film. On appeal, the Massachusetts Supreme Court attempted to accommodate what it considered legitimate, but competing, First and Fourth Amendment rights in 1969 by devising a compromise whereby only specialized audiences would be allowed to see the documentary. Twice Wiseman v. Massachusetts was just one vote short of the needed four votes for review by the U.S. Supreme Court. For more than two decades Titicut Follies was the only American film to be burdened with court-imposed restrictions for reasons other than obscenity or threat to national security.
Unwilling to accept these restrictions, Wiseman returned to the Massachusetts courts. In 1989 Superior Court judge Andrew Meyer ordered blurring the faces of some men appearing in the film as a condition of general exhibition, an accommodation that had been unacceptable to Wiseman from the beginning. Urged to reconsider, the judge ordered all restrictions lifted in 1991. By then convinced that the privacy issue was of less concern to the court than the prior restraint issue and having seen no evidence of harm to any individual as a result of the film being exhibited, Meyer decided the time had finally come to free Titicut Follies. In April, 1993, twenty-six years after its initial release, Titicut Follies was broadcast on public television to a national audience.