The Titicut Follies

Boston lawyer Frederick Wiseman was inspired to direct his first documentary while teaching a class in criminal law. After taking his students on several field trips to the Bridgewater State Hospital, a mental hospital for the criminally insane in Massachusetts, he was granted permission to take cameras into the facility. Wiseman and his cameraman, John Marshall, spent 29 days at the Bridgewater State Hospital in 1966, and Wiseman spent six months editing the 80 hours of 16mm film footage into an 87-minute feature. Titicut Follies debuted at the 1967 New York Film Festival and received a six-day run in a New York City theater, but further screenings were prevented by legal action from the hospital, which claimed the film violated the privacy rights of the patients. "I always make a full disclosure of the method and the procedure," Wiseman explained in a 2016 interview. "It's extremely important to make a full disclosure about what you're doing - not only is it the ethical thing but it also means nobody can come back at you if they didn't like the movie." The Massachusetts Superior Court, however, granted an injunction and ordered all copies of the film be destroyed. Wiseman appealed, and in 1969 the ban was amended to allow private screenings for educational purposes. Even restricted to academic screenings, the film has been credited with exposing abuses within the institution and leading to improvements in the care of the mentally ill, though Wiseman dismisses such claims. "It's both naive, arrogant, and presumptuous for me or any other filmmaker to say that their film produces social change," he told an audience in 2016. "I like to think the movie may have contributed to [Bridgewater closing], but I actually have no idea." In 1991, the court overturned the ban. The reason? The inmates featured in the film had all died so there were no more privacy rights to consider. Titicut Follies made its first public screening in over two decades at the Boston Film Festival in 1991, and in 1992 PBS broadcast the film in its entirety. By Sean Axmaker Sources: "Frederick Wiseman on His Banned Classic Titicut Follies," Paula Bernstein. Filmmaker Magazine, April 22, 2016. "Titicut Follows, The Documentary Film About a Madhouse So Shocking It Was Banned," New England Historical Society, date unknown. AFI Catalog of Feature Films