TITICUT FOLLIES (1967)

Before I got my driver’s license, the only way to get to Boston from my hometown of Middleboro, Massachusetts (besides a ride from Mom & Dad) was a local bus that stopped at a prison in the neighboring town of Bridgewater to pick up the newly released ex-cons and ship ‘em home (or the nearest equivalent). Years later, I discovered the prison was actually the notorious state hospital for alcoholics, sex offenders and the criminally insane profiled in Frederick Wiseman’s controversial documentary Titicut Follies, a movie even more disturbing than all those long-ago bus rides. In stark black and white, Wiseman shows the subhuman conditions of the 1960s version of the facility and the desperation of the inmates (including one poor bastard I still remember vividly, years after the first and only time I watched the film, who keeps explaining, over and over again, that he’s perfectly sane and would really, really, really like to leave the premises). As an avid psychedelic drug enthusiast in my younger days, winding up in a mental hospital (mistakenly or not) has always been high on my list of worst-case scenarios, but Titicut Follies (named for the grimly surreal inmate “talent show” depicted in the film) is worst-case by way of 18th century Bedlam: “We see men needlessly stripped bare, insulted, herded about callously, mocked, taunted,” Robert Coles wrote of the film in The New Republic. “We see them ignored or locked interminably in cells. We hear the craziness in the air...” Massachusetts was so embarrassed by the film they tried not only to ban it, but also to have all copies destroyed (!) on the grounds that somehow the documentary violated the patients’ dignity more than, say, being held indefinitely in cell blocks without toilets and periodically hosed down. Wiseman asserted repeatedly that he’d received permission from all the patients who appeared in the film (or their guardians), yet (according to Wikipedia, at least) the film wasn’t legally cleared for general public release until 1991, at which point the Massachusetts State Supreme Court also stipulated the film would need to include a “brief explanation...that changes and improvements have taken place at Massachusetts' Correctional Institution in Bridgewater since 1966.”  One would hope.

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My father, a much more avid reader than I, once told me that “the more books you read, the more you need to read.” In my experience, that’s just as true for movie watching, and every year I find myself with more directors whose films I feel compelled to seek out. This year, one of my biggest moviegoing resolutions has been to acquaint myself with the work of Frederick Wiseman, who over the past four decades has become one of the most celebrated documentarians in film history.

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For more than forty years, Frederick Wiseman has been one of the hardest-working and most respected documentary filmmakers in the world. Starting with the 1967 Titicut Follies, a look inside the Bridgewater, Mass., State Prison for the Criminally Insane that so rattled the prison administrators that they instigated legal proceedings that kept the film out of distribution for twenty-five years, he's made thirty films that examine one institution, activity, or way of life after another, mostly stamped with generic-sounding titles such as High School, Hospital, Basic Training, Welfare, Juvenile Court, Meat. Domestic Violence, and State Legislature. For most of his career, he's been dependent on public television not just for funding but for his widest national audience, and his films have remained dismayingly unavailable on home video.

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As anyone who's perused the American Film Institute's lists can tell you, consensus is boring. Unfortunately, it's hard to get around when you conduct a poll. The International Documentary Association has asked its members to select the twenty-five greatest documentaries ever made. (They voted from a list of 700 films, but that complete list doesn't seem to be available on the IDA's website.) It reveals that documentarians are just as prone to sticking with the "new release" shelves and shying away from subtitles as the rest of us. Despite the "international" in the IDA's name, only two foreign-language films made the top twenty-five — Buena Vista Social Club landed at #20 and Night and Fog at #22. Never fear, though: Michael Moore will come to save the day, with three films on the list. While including a number of landmarks (Titicut Follies, Don't Look Back, Grey Gardens), the list leans towards high-profile recent documentaries, including major films (Capturing the Friedmans, Grizzly Man) and mediocrities (Born into Brothels, Spellbound). Any films made before 1955 are missing — so much for Dziga Vertov (without whom Koyaanisqatsi, the #14 entry, would look much different) and Robert Flaherty. A strict definition of documentary seems to have kept F for Fake and Close Up at bay. All but two films are available on DVD — I wonder if this has anything to do with Netflix's sponsorship of the poll.  Still, this list isn't entirely without merit in the long run — like the AFI's, it begs to be countered and is bound to spur dialogue, as it already has in the blogosphere. — Steve Erickson