In Cold Blood Review- By Michael J. Carlisle

 Title: In Cold Blood
Year: 1967
Director: Richard Brooks
Country: US
Language: English

With the book In Cold Blood, Capote claimed to have invented a new form, the “nonfiction novel.” Factual accounts of crime were common enough before, but Capote combined in depth reporting with the techniques of the New Journalism to create a work that was quite awe inspiring for its time. His development of this form, which he described as combining the “horizontal” linearity of journalism with the “verticality” of fiction, “taking you deeper and deeper into characters and events,” led him to give his narrative a filmic structure. A best seller of its time, Capote chose Brooks to entrust with his hot property because, as the writer explained, “he was the only director who agreed with—and was willing to risk—my own concept of how the book should be transferred to film."

After a botched robbery results in the brutal murder of a rural family, two drifters (Perry & Dick) elude police, in the end coming to terms with their own mortality and the repercussions of their vile atrocity.

Both Brooks and Capote wanted the film shot in black and white, which in 1967 still signified an alignment with documentary realism, and insisted on casting unfamiliar actors as the killers. Originally Paul Newman and Steve McQueen were supposed to play the part of the two killers, but that casting would have moved the picture in the wrong direction. Capote's narrative was detached from the events, thus being able to view its characters and their world from the outside with photographic objectivity. 

The film was controversial for the time, generating heat from those who found it gratuitously violent, an apology for murderers, a kneejerk liberal attack on capital punishment. Linked with Bonnie and Clyde (1967) many thought it signified a decay in American values. Obviously more shocking in 1967 than it was today, I personally felt In Cold Blood fairly assessed the murderers as both victims of a cruel childhood and senseless cold murderers. 

In Cold Blood is quite a powerful film because it is disenchanted and hopeless. Though the murders are  not graphically shown, the score-less scenes strike a nerve and make one wonder if such a thing as "security" exists. Brooks' American landscape seems very random indeed; it can yield both prosperity and bottomless misery, but getting either is entirely up to chance. Praise it! 5/5