The Witness

The Witness (2017) is a documentary about the murder of Kitty Genovese.  This slaying in  March 196 was famously reported by A.M. ("Abe") Rosenthal in The New York Times.  Rosenthal massaged the facts so support the striking claim (apparently originating with the "beat" reporter) that 38 inhabitants of the apartment building where Genovese lived saw her being butchered but did absolutely nothing.  As the film notes, this aspect of the story became far more famous than the murder itself, establishing in sociological literature something called "the bystander effect."  "The bystander effect" represents the proposition that if many people witness a violent crime each will expect the other to take action to intervene with the effect that no one does anything.  In its more sinister form, the "bystander effect" has been invoked to support the assertion that most people, particularly in urban environments, are simply too apathetic and disengaged to protect a victim from assault.  The Genovese murder has been repeatedly asserted as diagnostic of alienation that afflicts the "lonely crowd" in big cities, people who turn up their TV sets to avoid hearing cries for help.  But, of course, there's a serious problem with all of this gloomy analysis:  it's based on what we now call "false news."  Rosenthal's story about the 38 uncaring witnesses was invented -- in fact, people in the apartment complex (who could not see what was happening to Genovese) heard her screams and called the police.  At least, one woman, at risk to herself, rushed to Genovese's rescue and the victim died in her arms.  There's no evidence that anyone turned a blind eye (or, more accurately, a "deaf ear") to what was  happening to Genovese.  One of the neighbors recalls, however, that many of people in the housing complex were tattooed with concentration camp numbers and, therefore, perhaps, hesitant to trust government authorities or the police.  Nonetheless, as Mike Wallace observes, "Abe" Rosenthal made up the story of the apathetic 38 witnesses to "sell newspapers." 

The Witness is an ambitious production and it ventures considerably beyond an exploration of the so-called "bystander effect."  In fact, the film resembles to some degree Errol Morris' remarkable Wormwood in that the picture is driven by an obsessive inquiry by Genovese's brother, Bill.  Bill Genovese lost both legs in Vietnam and believes that he volunteered for active duty in the Marines because he didn't want to be viewed as "apathetic" -- in other words, the story of the 38 witnesses was decisive in his life and may have resulted in his own mutilation.  In Wormwood, a son who refuses to accept the official account of his father's death, allegedly suicide but possibly murder, destroys his life and the lives of his family by devoting his entire existence to attempts to discover what really happened to his father -- he goes so far as disinterring his father's corpse and having it dissected.  In The Witness, Bill Genovese is literally crippled by his sister's murder  -- we see him crawling up the steps in the stairwell where his sister died on his hands and stumps of his legs.  He also will spare no effort to learn the truth about his sister's murder -- at the end of the movie, he even restages his sister's murder, hiring an actress to scream for help on the sidewalk in front of the apartment and in the stairwell where Kitty died.  Bill Genovese, only half a man after the blast tore off his legs, is like a living metaphor -- when we see him in his wheelchair, distraught on the dark sidewalk in front of the apartment building, we get a powerful sense for how this obsession has ruined him.  (And, as in Wormwood, there are family conferences in which his brothers keep urging him to cease and desist from his obsessive research -- it ultimately proves nothing, his siblings tell him, and just re-opens wounds that are fifty-years old.)  But Bill will not be relegated to the status of a feckless bystander and he continues to aggressively prosecute his sleuthing to the horror of everyone else involved.  Most of Bill's efforts relate to reconstructing his sister's life and gathering details about her murder -- the myth of the 38 complacent witnesses has been repeatedly debunked in the years following the crime.  Ultimately, Bill tries to interview Winston Mosely, the murderer.  Mosely remains incarcerated and his son, a spectacularly smarmy fellow, tries to parley Bill's obsession into a favorable petition to the parole board -- although to no avail.  Mosely's son, wearing a big cross, argues that Winston was "triggered" by racial slurs uttered by Kitty Genovese.  Bill points out that a week before killing Kitty, Mosely murdered an African-American woman, raped her as she was dying, and, then, set her and her house on fire.  Mosely's son says disingenuously that he didn't hear much about that.  He, then, argues that the Genovese murder was possibly gang-related:  "Aren't you the Genovese crime family?" he asks.  (Later, Winston Mosely sends a letter to Bill Genovese claiming that he was just the driver for a gangland hit on Kitty.)  The duel between the murderer's son and the victim's brother, which is so understated as to be invisible, is striking -- we see how events have consequences fifty years later and how the two men, now old themselves, clash over how their relatives are to be remembered and portrayed.  As it turns out, Kitty was gay and the famous picture of her was a police mug shot -- she was arrested and jailed for running numbers for a bookie and, so, there is a tiny kernel of truth as to Mosely's assertion that she was involved in organized crime.  In fact, she was a bartender at a somewhat disreputable establishment in Queens and the viewer suspects that, perhaps, there's a little more to the gang connection than meets the eye.  In any event, the film is effective and moving -- it was broadcast on Independent Lens, a documentary series on PBS, that starts at 10:00 pm. I was tired and didn't want to stay up late to watch the movie, but after about two minutes casual viewing, I was hooked and stayed for the full ninety minutes.