Author Truman Capote
IN COLD BLOOD A-
USA (134 mi) 1967
‘Scope d: Richard Brooks
The village of
Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that
other Kansans call “out there.” Some
seventy miles east of the Colorado border, the countryside, with its hard blue
skies and desert-clear air, has an atmosphere that is rather more Far West than
Middle West. The local accent is barbed with a prairie twang, a ranch-hand
nasalness, and the men, many of them, wear narrow frontier trousers, Stetsons,
and high-heeled boots with pointed toes. The land is flat, and the views are
awesomely extensive; horses, herds of cattle, a white cluster of grain
elevators rising as gracefully as Greek temples are visible long before a
traveler reaches them.
—Truman Capote, first paragraph from the opening chapter,
The Last to See Them Alive, from In Cold Blood, 1966
Who so sheddeth
man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.
—Genesis 9:6
(mis-identified in the film as Genesis
9:12), spoken by the Prosecutor (Will Geer)
It all began with a brief piece in The New York Times, from Holcolmb, Kansas on November 16,
1959: “A wealthy wheat farmer, his wife
and their two young children were found shot to death today in their home. They
had been killed by shotgun blasts at close range after being bound and gagged…
There were no signs of a struggle, and nothing had been stolen. The telephone
lines had been cut.” Author Truman
Capote happened to take a special interest in the incident, enough for him to
travel to Kansas to investigate the case, especially after the killers, Dick
Hickock and Perry Smith were arrested six weeks after the murders. Capote eventually compiled 8000 pages of notes
and spent six years working on the book through the trial, conviction, and long
appeal process, but after they were executed by hanging in April, 1965, the
story was initially released 5 months later in a four-part installment in The New Yorker magazine and was an
instant success. The true crime or
“non-fiction” novel was released in January of the following year, considered a
landmark work, one of the first of its kind (following by 9 years the
publication of Argentinean journalist Rodolfo Walsh’s 1957 book Operación Masacre, an exposé on the
military coup and ousting of Argentine President Juan Perón) and perhaps the
most successful ever, where despite its claims of authenticity, being a true
account of what happened, Capote admittedly took poetic license by adding
scenes that never happened while also recreating dialogue. Capote conducted interviews with both men
after they were convicted, developing a particularly close relationship with
Perry Smith, where rumors persist they may have developed a sexual bond
together, developing a special fascination with the more tender and sensitive
side of a brutal killer. Capote
reportedly remarked, “It’s as if Perry and I grew up in the same house. And one day he stood up and went out the back
door, while I went out the front.”
One of the more critical voices *against* the book was
from fellow Southern author Tom Wolfe in a 1976 essay called Pornoviolence, calling it sadistic and
sensational, where he attributes a growing trend in the media to glorify
violence as a way of satiating the audience, citing Tobe Hooper’s film THE
TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (1974) and Capote’s book In Cold Blood, arguing that in the absence of mystery, since we
already know the outcome, Capote provides gruesome and salacious details,
reducing the work to little more than lurid sensationalism. Certainly violence in American movies rose to
new heights with the release of Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967), told
sympathetically from the point of view of the outlaws, adding folksy humor with
bullets and death, where despite the gratuitous violence, their murderous
tendencies are secondary to the power of their performances which endear them
to the public, becoming part of American folklore, much like the extraordinary
performances seen throughout THE GODFATHER (1972). Even James Cagney in White Heat (1949) is as
entertaining as they come, and his sheer willpower dominates the picture, which
is what endears him to audiences even as they know he’s a loathsome psychotic
killer who probably deserves the electric chair. BONNIE AND CLYDE was a sensation, however,
where Time magazine called it the
“Movie of the Decade,” nominated for 10 Academy Awards. Nonetheless, New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther’s response was to call
it “a cheap piece of bald-faced slapstick that treats the depredations of that
sleazy pair as though they were full of fun and frolic.” Crowley was asked to retire later that same
year, as he was simply out of step with the radically changing expectations of
new movie audiences that also adored the minimalist romanticism of The Graduate (1967).
In Cold Blood
received more notoriety as a book than as a film, hailed as an acclaimed
masterpiece prior to release, where the pre-publication earnings totaled
something like 2 million dollars, which would suggest Capote was paid
approximately $15 per word. Possessed
with a near inhuman power of recall, Capote’s skill always lay in his
meticulously thorough detail, put to good use here displaying superb
journalistic skills in an exhaustive account of the senseless murder of the
entire Clutter family on their farm in Holcomb, Kansas (population 270), where
Hickock (Scott Wilson) and Smith (Robert Blake) netted only $40 dollars for
their efforts, substantially less than the $10,000 score they were expecting. What captured the nation’s attention was how
such a horribly gruesome crime could take place in America’s heartland with no
hint of a comprehensible motive. What
Capote provided along with the criminal exposé was a piece of Americana, a time
capsule landscape portrait of rural America, picking up every detail of life in
a small community on what may as well be the far edge of the world. Much like Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, published in 1955, Capote’s
highly subjective writing style unleashes his power of observation using flashbacks,
fragmented memories, or psychologically traumatic moments to alter the sense of
time, accentuating brief moments, slowing down the pace, drawing sympathy from
scenes of a character’s childhood while also revealing the vast expanse of an
empty landscape that seems to last forever.
At least in part a road movie, as the two men are constantly on the run,
there is a neverending stream of motel rooms, endless night highways, wayside
drive-ins, and nondescript towns with no names, where perhaps we’ll see a lone
railway stop as these aimless drifters pass through without any sense of where
they are. Told out of sequence in a near
documentary style, one of the most effective scenes comes on the vibrant
streets of Kansas City, watching how easily Hickock blends into the locale
using small town charm as he operates his check bouncing scheme collecting a
quick buck during the height of the Eisenhower 50’s, where he plays upon the
perceived security and good natured kindness of the store clerks and uses that
against them, in much the same way as they simply walked into the unlocked door
of the Clutter farmhouse.
Devastatingly low-key, much of it shot on actual site
locations, perhaps the best cinematic technique is how the director brilliantly
structures the scenes detailing the crime itself, leading us up to the moment
without actually showing the murders, then backtracking into the lives of the
murderers, making them the focus of the movie, while the book spends more time
developing the individual characters of the Clutter family. Brooks returns later to what the audience
doesn’t initially see, where the full graphic effect of the crime is
horrifying. Neighborly trust is something
to exploit, much like Nabokov’s young siren, which raises a profoundly interesting
moral dilemma, as throughout the film Hickock calls Smith honey or baby or
sweetie, all with sexual connotations, suggesting from a jail perspective that
Smith may exhibit gay or feminine characteristics. While Hickock brags of his sexual exploits,
Smith recoils in fear, recalling how his mother was beaten savagely by his
father for being caught sleeping with another man, suggesting a possible lack
of sexual prowess. It is only when
Hickock makes advances on Nancy Clutter (Brenda Currin), a teenage girl, that
Smith becomes enraged at his despicable behavior, exerting “I despise people
who can’t control themselves,” which kick-starts his aggression against the
otherwise helpless Clutter family.
There’s an interesting use of a police psychologist, Paul Stewart as Lee
Jensen, who acts as a writer’s voice of conscience throughout, continually
questioning the existence of moral reason and striving for psychological
clarity even in seemingly senseless cases, “How can a perfectly sane man create
an absolutely crazy act?” By the end,
there’s a melancholic cloud of doom that suggests a lack of closure or
finality, where despite the riches and prosperity of the nation, all we’re left
with is a pervasive sadness and emptiness filled with haunting, lingering
thoughts about the senselessness of it all, where there’s no reason to believe
capital punishment has any effect whatsoever on the criminal behavior of people
hopped up on drugs (linked to 80% of prison inmates, Drugs
or Alcohol Linked to 80% of Inmates - New York Times), enraged by jealousy,
or driven for whatever motives to carry out completely senseless acts of
violence.
