Truman Capote’s most famous book ‘In Cold Blood” released in 1966 is based on a true story. It covers the brutal murders of four members of the Clutter family by two friends Perry Smith and Dick Hickock and is written like a fictional story although it is factual. It created a new genre in itself as it was the first time journalism was written with the language and structure of literature. Very slowly, the reader gets the details about the who, what, when, and how of the murders and the narrative shifts between the different characters.
Although in a narrative form, the book tries to be as objective as possible as it relies on the words of the witnesses, friends and the murderers. For instance, the first part of the book, "The Last to See Them Alive”, is written in the form of a long narration of the school teacher who went with the sheriff to the Clutter house and found the four bodies. The early part of the book shifts alternately between the stories of the four members of the family against the stories of Perry and Dick and follows up with the efforts of friends to cope, murderers to evade, and detectives to track. It is a long process and Capote’s prose is very clear and precise.
Mr. and Mrs. Clutter and their two teenage children, Kenyon and Nancy living in Holcomb, Kansas, were discovered bound and shot to death during November 1959. Holcomb was a conservative and church-going rural community representative of most of rural America during the 1950’s and 60’s. Herbert Clutter, 48 years old is the head of the family and owns a ranch. His wife Bonnie Clutter is an affectionate mother of the children but suffers from depression. The Clutters have four children with the older two staying out of town. Only Nancy and Kenyon stay with their parents. All together they are a highly respected family and active members of the local community. Both Perry and Dick, who commit the murders, have no personal relationships with the Clutter family members and leave hardly any clues behind after the murder. This leaves all members of the close knit community in town confused and suspicious of each other and worried about their own safety. Al Dewey who heads the murder investigation is deeply affected by the murders and is obsessed with finding the murderers. Finally a “witness” is found who has seen the murderers and with the help of footprints and a pair of binoculars and radio left behind, both Perry and Dick are arrested, confess and are executed.
As written by Capote, the book is a masterpiece and created a new genre in itself. The whole book is about the murder and goes into a great deal of detail on the Clutter family and background and possible motivations of both the murderers. It is written in a manner in which the murders are mentioned right in the beginning and the story unravels with a countdown to the murders. There are lots of small details which establish a rapport between the reader and the characters in the book. The narrative continuously shifts between the different characters from the murderers planning the crime to eyewitness accounts of the discovery of the murders. The book is very disconcerting and disturbing for there is no real reason we can identify on why the murders took place or what exactly did the two murderers benefit from the crime. The book doesn't really try to give the definitive answer to these questions as much as it tries to offer relative answers.
While reading this book, it was interesting to note that Capote himself called it a non-fiction novel, which he defined as "a narrative form that employed all techniques of fictional art, but was nevertheless immaculately factual” [1]. Capote read a small news item on the murders and spent many years researching in Holcomb with the help of his friend Harper Lee. The book initially came out as a series of articles in The New Yorker magazine during 1965 and was later published in the form of a book during 1966. Truman spent more than six years researching for this novel interviewing almost all the people concerned with the investigation and the town folk. The things which make this book great are its attention to minor details which portray the characters well. It takes us into the minds of the killers, Perry and Dick, how they met, planned, and executed what was intended to be a robbery without witnesses, how it all went awry, and what they did after the event. It gets inside the minds of two murderers and tries to get them to spill what got them to the point in their lives where they were ready to commit a gruesome killing casually. It was interesting to read that after the murder, Dick dropped Perry at his hotel, and then went home to his parent’s farmhouse, had dinner, and slept the rest of the afternoon while his father and brother watched a baseball on TV. Truman gets into the minds of members of the small rural and tight-knit community of Holcomb, and friends of the Clutters in nearby Garden City, where the family attended the Methodist church. He takes us behind the work of the detectives trying to solve these murders into their family lives, and their painstaking determination to solve a murder scene that revealed almost no clues.
The book fleshes out the characters very well. The 1950s were a period when after the World War, the U.S was enjoying an economic prosperity and boom not witnessed earlier. The U.S economy was dominant and optimistic. Like other families, the Clutter family was educated and financially stable settled in a small town which was doing well. Herbert Clutter was a respected member of the society and active in his church and business associations. He had a large number of friends in this small town and both his younger children were good students and also very popular with many close friends. Herbert’s character is well defined as an educated man, a hard worker, a good employer, a good husband and father. His wife, Bonnie, the mother of four children is devoted to the children but suffering from depression. The daughter Nancy is described as the town’s darling as she is not only a very good student but also very friendly. She is also active in the community. Kenyon, the youngest child is a loner but very intelligent and likes to build and modify machines.
The two murderers Perry and Dick on the other hand have not had stable home lives. Perry had an abusive childhood. He was neglected and had an abandoned childhood and suffered at the hands of nuns. He has not passed the third grade and suffers from nightmares. Although he looks calm and gentle with a love for literature, he finally turns out to be the brutal one among the two. Dick on the other hand is greedy and lustful, interested in money and women although he comes from a stable but poor background. He is not educated but charming and is the main instigator for the murders. There are also some hints that both of them may have been attracted to each other sexually, although that is not very clear. The fact that they did not agree on many things also made it fascinating that they agreed to do these brutal murders.
Al Dewey who heads the Clutter investigation also dominates the book. He is obsessed by the murders and spends all his time and energy in trying to solve this case. He is haunted by the murders and plans to continue investigation till he can find the reasons for the murders.
After their arrest, both Dick and Perry are put in jail where they try to plot their escape. Perry also considers suicide. During the trial, the sanity of both Dick and Perry is checked and both are considered sane. However found guilty, they are both executed in 1965. Interestingly Al Dewey attends the execution and is disturbed by the execution of Perry whom he feels sorry for as he had a bad childhood.
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The movie ‘In Cold Blood” directed by Richard Brooks was released in 1967. I had read the book before I saw the movie and what I could make out was that the movie slavishly tries to stick to the book. It tries to render an accurate depiction of the events recorded in the book. The actors all played their roles well and I was particularly impressed by the actors who played the roles of Dick and Perry. Their performances were very believable.
The movie starts of beautifully with a bus being driven on empty roads on a dark night with the camera focussing on a small child in the bus and slowly showing Perry sitting is the bus. The music also builds the crescendo to this very well. Robert Blake who played the role of Perry was outstanding throughout the film. Scott Wilson playing the role of Dick also gave a very authentic performance.
The camera captures the bleak and empty landscape in Kansas beautifully. Unlike the average movie with loud performances by actors, here all the performances by the actors are understated. The movie does not glamorise the criminals. I would say that in one sense, the movie shows all the characters as those who have suffered either material or emotional losses to some extent. The town and most of the characters there lose their innocence while off course the murderers and their victims lose their lives. There is also nothing dashing about the detective, Al Dewey and he is more matter of fact and stolid in his performance. At times, I felt that I was watching a documentary rather than a movie. There is a sense of fear and darkness throughout the movie which left me restless and edgy while watching it. The photography is in black and white and brings out the suspense more than a colour movie can. Unlike present day thrillers, which rely more on action, sound and computer graphics, the sheer understatement in this movie makes it tense and creepy. Robert Blake was a more frightening killer than Anthony Hopkins in “Silence of the Lambs” and the average reader would confess to having nightmares about the fact that there are such people roaming around the world who kill brutally without rhyme or reason.
Quincy Jones who is the music director for the movie provides an excellent jazz score to the music generally. While I enjoyed the musical score for most of the movie, it was a bit overdone at times and I would have preferred the silence or actual sounds. Having said that, the use of the natural sounds and silence helped in some of the more notable scenes in the movie. The combination of brilliant cinematography, music and sound is overall outstanding in this movie. The flat and bleak landscape of Kansas with roads stretching for distances without a curve is captured beautifully in black and white. If anything, I think the black and white imagery captures the reality of this movie better than a colour movie could.
The starkness is reinforced by neat, economical editing. Interesting scenes were when putting on the light switch in Dick’s farmhouse carries us to the Clutter home, where a light is being turned on. A cigarette butt is discarded, and its ugly cylinder looks like an electromagnet searching for the murder weapon. The Clutters' cleaner realises that a radio has been stolen, and we see the radio playing at Dick's bedside. The novel was gripping from the beginning till the end, whereas the movie after a while seemed a bit predictable. However, it captured the essence of the narrative accurately.
While the movie was very interesting, I feel some things could have been better portrayed. Some bits of the movie looked gimmicky to me like Perry’s bus becoming a train while passing through Holcomb or the scene where Herbert Clutter is shaving and then he becomes one of the murderers shaving. At times I felt that some of the scenes in the movie were a little more dramatic than I would have liked. I was also not sure of the addition in the movie with the introduction of a reporter who commented on the Death Row. I am not sure whether his dialogues on hangings and morals of capital punishment were really needed in what is probably in what is one of the finest movies I have seen in my life. Fortunately we don't see that much blood being spilled in the murder scenes, but the shotgun blasts and the horrified look on the Clutters' faces as they know they are about to die are disturbing enough. For me, the biggest failing of the movie is that of non-exploration of the study on the criminally insane, which was given very little time. The most important psychological aspects of any crime are the criminal intent (Mens Rea) and the motive or the Modus Operandi. This psychological exploration into the minds of the criminally insane is missing in the movie and I definitely would have liked to see more of that.
To ask if the film is as good as the book is I think meaningless, for it is certainly a highly-commendable reworking of the book in visual terms. The interplay between the two murderers is first-class, the easy charm of Dick giving way at critical moments to naked fear of the dreamer Perry.
Having said that, some of the issues and themes raised in the book do not seem to have been fully explored in the movie, but that is generally the problem with film adaptations compared to their original book. Books tend to be more detailed and vivid as compared to the movie and there are time restrictions for movies. I feel that the book paints the Clutters in a one dimensional manner as a representation of hard working ethics and a typical middle class success story. Perry however seems to be portrayed more sympathetically and as a victim of a tragic past with childhood trauma and family abuse. Perry in many ways is the central character of the book and Truman seems to be almost justifying the reasons when he mentions various possibilities like an ill-fated crossing of paths, a psychological accident, mental illness, or displaced revenge. Whether, trying to justify such a heinous crime is correct on Truman’s part, I am not sure, if it were not for the fact that the book is so well written otherwise.
I also wonder if Truman Capote was thinking of a movie and accordingly wrote his narrative in a cinematic manner where he uses weaving of different story strands, intense close-ups, flashbacks etc. In that sense, this is a book waiting to be made into a movie. I am not sure if it could have been made as a successful documentary, for it finally survives as a classic mainly due to the imagination and crisp story telling method of Truman Capote.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/12/28/home/capote-interview.html
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