Truman Capote’s true crime novel In Cold Blood tells the story of the murder of a prominent family in Kansas. The Clutters- Herb, Bonnie, Nancy and Kenyon were mercilessly murdered by Dick Hickock and Perry Smith on November 15, 1959. The murder of the Clutter family left the towns of Holcomb and Garden City, Kansas in shock and fear. Capote examines all aspects of the Clutter case throughout the novel. In 1967, director Richard Brooks brought Capote’s text to life in the film adaptation of In Cold Blood. Brooks focuses on the larger points of the novel in his film, but excludes certain pieces of information necessary for the audiences understanding of why this case was so important. Richard Brooks ineffectively translates Truman Capote’s
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The first person he chooses to describe is Herb Clutter. Capote states that “He [Herb] was, however the community’s most widely known citizen, prominent both there and in Garden City, the close-by county seat, where he had headed the building committee for the newly completed First Methodist Church, an eight-hundred-thousand dollar edifice”(6). Through this direct and indirect characterization, the reader is able to learn a solid amount of information about Mr. Clutter. Not only does the reader discover that he is well known, but it is also learned that he is religious and wealthy. Brooks in no way mentions the importance of Herb or his family to those in Holcomb. Instead, the film merely describes Mr. Clutter as a wealthy farmer and his family as “decent and ordinary”. Without the understanding that the Clutters were a significant family the movie loses sight of why this murder rose to fame and how the community was affected by this tragic loss. Capote proclaimed that after the murders “the townspeople, therefore sufficiently unfearful of each other to seldom lock their doors, found fantasy re-creating them over and again—those somber explosions that stimulated fires of mistrust in the glare which many old neighbors viewed each other strangely, and as strangers” (5). Through the use of amplification Capote is able emphasize the extent the crime had on the community. The people of Holcomb and Garden City were once trusting of one another, but that all changed because of the Clutter case. In the film adaptation of In Cold Blood, Brooks did not recognize the significance of the Clutter family, leading the audience to not fully understand the effect of the crime on members of the
The first person he chooses to describe is Herb Clutter. Capote states that “He [Herb] was, however the community’s most widely known citizen, prominent both there and in Garden City, the close-by county seat, where he had headed the building committee for the newly completed First Methodist Church, an eight-hundred-thousand dollar edifice”(6). Through this direct and indirect characterization, the reader is able to learn a solid amount of information about Mr. Clutter. Not only does the reader discover that he is well known, but it is also learned that he is religious and wealthy. Brooks in no way mentions the importance of Herb or his family to those in Holcomb. Instead, the film merely describes Mr. Clutter as a wealthy farmer and his family as “decent and ordinary”. Without the understanding that the Clutters were a significant family the movie loses sight of why this murder rose to fame and how the community was affected by this tragic loss. Capote proclaimed that after the murders “the townspeople, therefore sufficiently unfearful of each other to seldom lock their doors, found fantasy re-creating them over and again—those somber explosions that stimulated fires of mistrust in the glare which many old neighbors viewed each other strangely, and as strangers” (5). Through the use of amplification Capote is able emphasize the extent the crime had on the community. The people of Holcomb and Garden City were once trusting of one another, but that all changed because of the Clutter case. In the film adaptation of In Cold Blood, Brooks did not recognize the significance of the Clutter family, leading the audience to not fully understand the effect of the crime on members of the