Word: bedlam
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...Titicut Follies shows that, unhappily, not every institution for the mentally ill is as enlightened as Warrendale. Some are trapped in traditions as old as Bedlam, and one such is seen in this raw, poorly edited report on Bridgewater Hospital for the Criminally Insane in the Titicut area of Massachusetts. As filmed by Frederick Wiseman and John Marshall, who had the cooperation of the institute's authorities, the life of the patients seems like an echo of Marat/Sade, an existence bereft of dignity or honor. Old men are paraded naked to their cells and taunted by guards who make...
...White House was in near bedlam last week as staffers struggled against time to complete arrangements for the President's Far Eastern swing. If for no other reason, it was an ideal time for Lyndon Johnson to hit the campaign trail, and so he did - with a bang. Displaying all the old evangelistic fervor of his 1964 campaign, the President made a fast-paced overnight foray into Maryland, New York and Delaware, at week's end prepared for a brief, last-minute appearance in Pennsylvania...
Deitch grossly misplays Diccon, the one role which might have substance, assumedly with Kaplan's approval or instructions. Diccon is a Bedlam, a lunatic released from the asylum to beg about the country, like Poor Tom in King Lear. Deitch plays him as a controlled crafty-plotter--a fuzzy combination of Puck and an American confidence-man. His dress and manner is stylized motley rather than lunatic tatters. His elegant flourishing makes him swallow the many good jokes he has, and completely twist his character...
...plot, as much as one cares, is about the strange disappearance of Dame Gurton's sewing needle (Raye Bush is Gammer, not the needle). We eventually find it in the britches of her man Hodge (Dan Chumley), an acrobatic archetypal simpleton, but not until Diccon the Bedlam (Dan Deitch) has thrown everyone at each other's throats and chickens...
...Bedlam broke loose when the group began to march off. A rock crashed into one Negro's chest. Pop bottles and cherry bombs filled the air. Scores of whites surged off the sidewalks and waded into the column with clubs, knives and fists. When some young Negroes began hitting back, the local cops, until then languid spectators, broke it up. "We got to go back," said a shaken King afterward. "This is the meanest town in the country." The marchers did return under heavy police guard, but they also learned that Mississippi had another town to rival Philadelphia...