Titicut Follies (1967)

At the Q&A after the screening some doofus asked Frederick Wiseman, "What advice do you have for an aspiring filmmaker such as yourself?" Wiseman replied, "Marry a rich woman."

ghostdinosaur

Too real. I've been in and out of various psychologist/psychiatrist/therapist's (or whatever they want to call themselves) offices. Some were helpful in this day of modern medicine! But I still feel like it's kind of impossible for the human mind to truly know and analyze…

Patrick Pryor

Wiseman's documentary is among some of the greatest examples of how powerful film can be. It can be much more than a form of entertainment or even an art piece. It can have the power to change the world. Titicut Follies is most notable as being banned in the U.S.A. of…

Robert Beksinski

Attacking the work of the Direct Cinema movement, Jean-Luc Godard wrote, “Their eye in the act of looking through the viewfinder is at once more and less than the registering apparatus that serves the eye.” Wiseman’s eye, meaning his choice in framing within a particular…

Peter Labuza

Naked men left to themselves, stomping and screaming in their rooms. A desperate man argues that the hospital makes him sicker. They feed a man his last meal, but he can't taste it. And everyone singing, singing, singing. This movie made me feel terrible. But it has some…

Ryan McSwain

Banned for 25 years! In the United States! Some of the Mondo filmmakers talked a good game, but Wiseman is the real deal.

Will Sloan

It really feels like you’re a fly-on-the-wall, as has often been mentioned: never too close, never too far. No off-screen interviewers, only recordings of daily life, but the focus never waivers. Raw, inhumane truths laid bare. Difficult viewing.

Sethsreviews

The close-ups are oppressive, albeit not not for squeezing close to the patients but for letting everything around them become a wall of sound, overlapping voices of authority commanding and mocking confused men yanked out of their cells only for infrequent feedings and…

Jake Cole

It’s not every day you see a film that starts with an interview of a child rapist and then gets worse.

mattheweg