The film In Cold Blood directed by Richard Brooks and based on the true story novel by Truman Capote truly brings to light just how life-like the modernist era of literature was. The film holds a number of the common attributes of Modernist literature, even though it is and entirely real story. The story has a non-linear plot line, an interior reality, a tight form, an experimented perspective, impressionist attention to lighting, a look at psychoanalysis, internalized time, psychological epiphany, and to an extent, an open ending. All of these attributes lay present in the film and each one is used to create the overall feel of the movie that by the end has its crowd feeling sorry for what many would call a cold-blooded killer, named Perry Smith.
The non-linear plot line of the film plays a large role in understanding the characters in the film. It actually manages to bring into play many other aspects of Modernism. The major breaks in the plot line is that the murder is cut out of the middle and is instead not shown until the end of the entire investigation. This allows for the unique opportunity of the viewer having a prolonged introduction into the characters, specifically into the psychology of Perry Smith so that by the time the viewer sees the act they are able to see Perry as a human being.
There is also a heavy dose of experimentation in form throughout the film. The scenes cuts actually end up being run together as if they were simply changes in camera angles. The end of one scene is some action whose opposite action begins the next scene but in a different place. For example a scene ending with a man leaving through a door would cut to a man entering through a door as if it was the same man and the same door. This tightening of form plays a key role throughout by giving a sense that the characters are very interconnected and that symbolically they are never very far away from one another, even when Hickock and Smith are in Mexico.
Three attributes that tend to become intertwined throughout the film are the perspectivism, the interior reality, and the psychoanalysis. Though the film is technically told from a third person point of view, there is a sense that Smith is telling the story to the audience, as it follows his movements. During Hickock’s late night in Mexico, the audience is introduced to the extent with which Smith was affected by his disturbing past, and the face of his father is seen where the executioner’s should be. The mood of the scenes also is very closely tied to Smith’s psychology, as the viewer struggles through awkward silences and tensions early on, then gets no sense of comprehension of the murder on Smith’s part, then sees him, in and epiphany, realize the disrupted psychology he had had which releases the tensions a bit, and stammers into realizing the cost of his actions moments before he is to hang.
Time is also internalized in the film, and it is also focused around the psychology of Smith. The actions leading up to the arrival at the Clutter household are somewhat slow-going. But Smith and Hickock’s flight to Mexico is a very quick happening where almost no actions are shown in full, but rather seem to happen in a rush. The murder actually happens in real-time, though the pace speeds up at the end with Smith’s rising emotions. And after, the time of jail is told in a very broken sense of waiting, without much of a sense of time apart from that given by the narrator. All of the actions of the film can be said to have happened in real time because they remained at the pace at which one can imagine such events would.
The impressionist attention to lighting detail can be seen in the film by the specific way that any shades of gray in the black and white film were lost, leaving only the black to completely contrast with the white. That account of light directly translates into the often used metaphor of black, white, and shades of grey as right wrong, and shades in between. To leave out the shades of gray actually becomes a powerful symbol of the judicial system and lack of understanding for the psychology of Perry Smith.
The last attribute is more in a moralistic sense than usual, but it applies all the same. Though the plot ended in a closed ending with the two similar deaths of two different men, Brooks made sure to add in a discussion at the end between Smith’s attorney and another man (Capote?) that indulged that an innocent man had hung, and in a month, it would probably happen again. This opens the ending moralistically leaving the viewer, who by the end has most likely almost pardoned Smith completely to wonder at the harshness of the current (1960s) legal system.
The fact that In Cold Blood was a film that exhibited many aspects of Modernist literature in itself is no major thing to discuss, but the real meaning lies in a realization just a bit deeper than that. In Cold Bloodwas a real story line. Capote learned the story and wrote the non-fiction book about it which was then, with Capote’s help, turned into a screenplay. The entire goal of Modernist literature was to express the actuality of life, as harsh as it may be, and in this film, one sees those two (real life and modernism) actually intertwine. The film is a representation that modernism is what it’s cracked up to be, a perception of actual reality.
