In Cold Blood (1967)
Country: US
Technical: bw/2.35:1 134m
Director: Richard Brooks
Cast: Robert Blake, Scott Wilson, John Forsythe, Paul Stewart, Jeff Corey
Synopsis:
The story of Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, as related by one of the prisoners to author Truman Capote: one night the Kansas pair drive four hundred miles to a respectable family home on a tip-off that proves fruitless. All four family members wind up dead and the assailants plot a course to Mexico, then Iowa via California, finally to be picked up in Nevada. The film ends with their execution by hanging in 1965.
Review:
Something of a cause célèbre of its time, Capote's novel set itself the task of 'explaining' the inexplicable murders of four strangers for forty dollars. Brooks's film, shot in incongruously anamorphic black and white, adopts an unsensationalist, confessional style which positions the spectator close to the killers while at the same time sharing the perplexity of the FBI detectives on the case, and the cynicism of a reporter following their progress. Events are shown chronologically, save for the killings which are held back for the confession near the end. The effect is to distance us from the crime long enough to get to know the killers sufficiently to clear the execution scene of any savour of vengeance, the aim indeed of Capote's book. The treatment stops short of a documnentary approach (no dates and times, etc.) but the conclusion is decidedly sociological rather than personal: the solution to the conundrum of the killings (the title itself is ambivalent, standing for the state possibly as well?) is that together Smith and Hickcock presented a third personality capable of perpetrating acts they would not have done alone.
Country: US
Technical: bw/2.35:1 134m
Director: Richard Brooks
Cast: Robert Blake, Scott Wilson, John Forsythe, Paul Stewart, Jeff Corey
Synopsis:
The story of Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, as related by one of the prisoners to author Truman Capote: one night the Kansas pair drive four hundred miles to a respectable family home on a tip-off that proves fruitless. All four family members wind up dead and the assailants plot a course to Mexico, then Iowa via California, finally to be picked up in Nevada. The film ends with their execution by hanging in 1965.
Review:
Something of a cause célèbre of its time, Capote's novel set itself the task of 'explaining' the inexplicable murders of four strangers for forty dollars. Brooks's film, shot in incongruously anamorphic black and white, adopts an unsensationalist, confessional style which positions the spectator close to the killers while at the same time sharing the perplexity of the FBI detectives on the case, and the cynicism of a reporter following their progress. Events are shown chronologically, save for the killings which are held back for the confession near the end. The effect is to distance us from the crime long enough to get to know the killers sufficiently to clear the execution scene of any savour of vengeance, the aim indeed of Capote's book. The treatment stops short of a documnentary approach (no dates and times, etc.) but the conclusion is decidedly sociological rather than personal: the solution to the conundrum of the killings (the title itself is ambivalent, standing for the state possibly as well?) is that together Smith and Hickcock presented a third personality capable of perpetrating acts they would not have done alone.
Country: US
Technical: bw/2.35:1 134m
Director: Richard Brooks
Cast: Robert Blake, Scott Wilson, John Forsythe, Paul Stewart, Jeff Corey
Synopsis:
The story of Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, as related by one of the prisoners to author Truman Capote: one night the Kansas pair drive four hundred miles to a respectable family home on a tip-off that proves fruitless. All four family members wind up dead and the assailants plot a course to Mexico, then Iowa via California, finally to be picked up in Nevada. The film ends with their execution by hanging in 1965.
Review:
Something of a cause célèbre of its time, Capote's novel set itself the task of 'explaining' the inexplicable murders of four strangers for forty dollars. Brooks's film, shot in incongruously anamorphic black and white, adopts an unsensationalist, confessional style which positions the spectator close to the killers while at the same time sharing the perplexity of the FBI detectives on the case, and the cynicism of a reporter following their progress. Events are shown chronologically, save for the killings which are held back for the confession near the end. The effect is to distance us from the crime long enough to get to know the killers sufficiently to clear the execution scene of any savour of vengeance, the aim indeed of Capote's book. The treatment stops short of a documnentary approach (no dates and times, etc.) but the conclusion is decidedly sociological rather than personal: the solution to the conundrum of the killings (the title itself is ambivalent, standing for the state possibly as well?) is that together Smith and Hickcock presented a third personality capable of perpetrating acts they would not have done alone.