In cold blood

Truman Capote’s account of the slaughter of a Kansas farming family by two violent drifters has been transformed into a chilling and brutal examination of the nature of violence by director Richard Brooks. The almost paradaisical black and white cinemtography seduces the viewer who is then confronted by the horrific reality of psychotic murder. “In Cold Blood”, as does Capote in his novel, refuses easy moralising, simple sociological explanations and resists turning the material into melodrama or conforming to the dictates of the gangster genre. Edited with sharp precision, this film shocked American viewers on its release by revealing the sadism and ugliness underneath the frontier myth of rural America. Music by Quincy Jones. Starring Robert Blake.