The Thin Blue Line
Screening on Film
Directed by Errol Morris .
US, 1988, 35mm, color, 101 min.
US, 1988, 35mm, color, 101 min.
Dubbed by its maker "the first murder mystery that actually solves a murder," The Thin Blue Line remains Morris’s most acclaimed and perhaps most controversial work. The filmmaker was long fascinated by Dr. James Grigson, a psychiatrist who earned the name "Dr. Death" for his testimony against defendants in murder cases, whom he pronounced "incurable psychopaths" and therefore deserving of the death penalty, Morris embarked on a series of interviews with Grigson’s death-row inmates. The film emerges from one of these cases, that of Randall Dale Adams, an inmate still pleading his innocence, whom Morris is convinced has been falsely convicted.