Having now read Truman Capote's American crime classic In Cold Blood, and then seen the movie version of it, originally released in 1967 and recently out in a newly-formatted DVD version starring Robert Blake as Perry Smith and Scott Wilson as Dick Hickok, I must say that the novel and the film, although they each tell the same story, are both excellent, but still, necessarily, different from each other. I liked them both equally: Capote's novel as a novel, and Richard Brooks' newly re-released 1967 film version of it. .

             A novel is capable of exciting the individual imagination, and also demands imaginative visualization from the reader, i.e., of characters, places, etc., in ways a film does not. A film version of a book, as a consequence, may seem visually disappointing to someone who, having previously read the book, happens to visualize the characters; places, situations, etc., differently than the movie director presents them. Or, conversely, one may feel very satisfied with a directors' visual sense of characters, settings, objects, etc., if his or her view matches one's own. I believe that this is because the human visual imagination, during the reading process, is so strong and powerful, so therefore a movie version often either very much pleases or very much disappoints. In my case, I liked the film version of Truman Capote's unforgettable story of the cold-blooded murder of the Clutter family, probably because I happened to have visualized most of the characters and settings pretty much the way that the film's director, Richard Brooks, presented them.

             In terms of differences between the two versions, one is that within Capote's novel, Dick's and Perry's respective personalities; quirks; family and social backgrounds; fantasies; fears; reasons for murder; relationships with each other, etc., are described more slowly and deliberately, with much more detail, over what seems a longer chronological period, and in many places, with greater suspense.