Should you watch Titicut Follies?
Who it’s good for, who it isn’t, and what’s in it. No ratings, no scores.
Titicut Follies
Documentary · 1967
Employing methods of direct cinema–observation, limited stylization, and non-intervention–this stark look into the State Prison for the Criminally Insane in Bridgewater, Massachusetts shows its denizens, who were often kept in barren cells and infrequently bathed, forced to strip naked publicly, force feeding, and the indifference and bullying by many of the hospital's staff.
The sides of Titicut Follies
- Bridgewater State Hospital in 1967
- Patients and guards with no narration
- A variety show put on by staff and inmates
Titicut Follies is good for you if…
- you want to see a real prison hospital with no narrator telling you what to think.
- you like raw black and white footage from the 1960s.
- you want to see what total power over patients looks like.
Titicut Follies is bad for you if…
- you can't watch patients stripped, mocked and force fed.
- you need some hope by the end.
About: confinement · dignity · cruelty
Closest to Titicut Follies
More like this
Taxi to the Dark Side 2008Good for you if you want the true story of one innocent man who died in US custody.
Night and Fog 1956Good for you if you want the camps documented a decade after, while the sites were still standing.
Shoah 1985Good for you if you want the Holocaust told by those who were there.
Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple 2006Good for you if you want to understand how ordinary people followed Jim Jones.
Hearts and Minds 1974Good for you if you want to see what the Vietnam War did to the people on both sides.
Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror 2021Good for you if you want the personal stories of people who lived through that day.