Murder sequence--equisitely directed?
In another thread the OP thought the Clutters' reactions were dull and therefore ruined the murder scene. I copied this reply:
Part of being raised from that solid Midwestern stock is that people get stoic and quiet in the face of danger. We use our brains and not our screams. Perhaps if the scene had been shot in Brooklyn, Beverly Hills or Miami Beach, you would have seen the victims reacting hysterically. But the scene in the film played out just like Perry Smith said it did in the book. It may seem weird to some but not to those of us raised west of the Mississippi.
Besides, what good would screams and yells have done? The Clutters were in the middle of nowhere, and nobody would have heard their cries for help.
I completely agree. Myself having been raised and nearly always lived the urban life (Seattle/Minneapolis/Chicago) I get that we folks might tend to find the film characters' portrayal unsatisfying. However, there was a 6-year period of my life spent in the Nebraska sandhills, and I learned a lot about the stoic survival-brand of Americans that get no press nor accurate movie representation. Deeply good, unknown and quiet people that are too often mischaracterized by the rest of us. I now feel the director's rendering of Capote's Clutter family rang about as true as I could possibly have imagined given my experience in that genuine part of this country.
Add to that the difference of eras. Any of us who saw the movie in the 60's/early 70's had not seen the hyper-sensational style of horror film that really began to proliferate by the late 70's and onward. We were young then and were frightened by Hitchcock, and Vincent Price, and maybe Night of The Living Dead('68), but nothing prepared us for the nightmares of In Cold Blood. There had never been a "reality TV" before. Vietnam and the cold war were the nightly background, but this movie had many people seriously locking doors by the end of the decade. Does anyone else think that the b/w film, the understated horror graphics and diminished gore serve the novel correctly?
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