In Cold Blood

Technically speaking, In Cold Blood, released in 1967, is a masterpiece. The direction by Richard Brooks, the editing by Peter Zinner, and particularly the cinematography by Conrad Hall are some of the finest work you will ever see. But as I watched, marveling at the technique, I wondered exactly what the story was offering me. Does the slaughter of a family in Kansas by two drifters really add up to anything?

This was, of course, an adaptation of Truman Capote's nonfiction novel, which was a publishing sensation. Two films have made about him writing the book (one of them, Capote, was my favorite film of 1995) and that story is more interesting than that of Dick Hickok and Perry Smith, who teamed up in 1959 to rob and murder the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas.

Brooks, I was interested to see in the DVD extras, was trying to make a statement against capital punishment. You could have fooled me. I am in principle against the death penalty, but when the individuals are known to be guilty and as remorseless and heinous as these two, I don't shed any tears. The film ends with them being hanged for their crimes, and while there may be no cheering (although I suspect some might) there is no wringing of hands, either.

The two killers are played by Robert Blake and Scott Wilson. Blake, who was a child star and went on to TV stardom (and was center stage in his own murder trial) is the more interesting character. It is Wilson who learned from a cellmate that Mr. Clutter had a safe full of money. This was untrue, as Wilson and Blake only get about forty dollars and a radio for their trouble. But they brutally murder all four members of the family by shotgun, including two teenagers (Smith is somehow presented as a better person, because he stops Wilson from raping the girl, but he still shoots her to death).

They are on the lam for several weeks, going to Florida, Mexico (Blake has a map and wants to hunt for buried treasure in the Yucatan), and then are caught in Las Vegas (the same cellmate gives the authorities a tip). A shoe print of Blake's ties them to the murder, and he ultimately confesses. Brooks, in his script, tries hard to make Blake sympathetic. He had a father who beat his mother, and didn't care much for him. And in Capote, the author becomes enamored of Perry Smith, suggesting that it was a crush of some sort.

So while In Cold Blood, as a story, is a police procedural of standard issue (John Forsythe is the lead investigator), it is the presentation that stands out. Hall, shooting in black and white with almost velvety blacks, makes several stunning shots. The introduction of Blake. lighting a cigarette on a bus, exposing his face with the match light, his telltale boot soles propped on a seat in front of him, is arresting. Perhaps the most famous shot of any that Hall made was late in the film, when Blake, minutes from his execution, tells a priest about his father. It is raining outside, and the streaks of water on the windowpane are reflected on Blake's face, making it look like tears.

The editing by Zinner is also magnificent. Many times he utilizes cuts that go from one scene to another tied by a certain image or sound. Blake's bus fades to a train pulling into Holcomb station. A phone ringing in one shot is answered by a different phone in another shot. And in a scene that can be credited to all three men, when the Clutters are discovered by neighbors the morning after their murders, the camera is moving from room to room, before the neighbors arrive. Usually a moving camera is a POV shot, but there is no one alive in the house, making the viewer disoriented. Is someone alive?

The film was a success, and Brooks and Hall were both Oscar-nominated. The film was shot on location, including in the very house in which the murders took place. Anyone interested in cinematography has to see this film for Hall's work. But I couldn't help but feel an emptiness after it was over. I learned nothing from it.