Titicut Follies

Amos Vogel: ‘A gallery of horrors, a reflection on man's unlimited capacity to destroy his fellow man.’ The debut of Frederick Wiseman, the most important ‘institutional documentarian’ in film history, takes a look at the previously shielded, repressed world of the hospital at the state prison for the mentally ill in Massachusetts. The film is notorious for its disturbing images of often inhumane conditions (the bitterly ironic title refers to the inmates' terrifying annual variety show). Although made with the cooperation of psychiatrists, guards and social workers, it was banned for ‘violating the privacy of the supervisors,’ a ruling that was only overturned in 1992. (C.H.) Frederick Wiseman: ‘If privacy was violated, it was that of the authorities who took it upon themselves to run the institution the way they did.’