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Dead Man Walking, a 1995 film directed by Tim Robbins (Mission to Mars, Bull Durham, Shawshank Redemption), is based on Sister Helen Préjean's memoir of the same title.

Starring Susan Sarandon (Stepmom, Lorenzo's Oil, Thelma and Louise) and Sean Penn (Before Night Falls, Sweet and Lowdown, The Thin Red Line), the film tells the story of Préjean and death row inmate Matthew Poncelet, a fictional character drawn from two condemned men Préjean counseled at Louisiana's Angola State Prison. At first, Préjean agrees to correspond with Poncelet and visit him in prison, as part of her work as a Roman Catholic nun. Soon, Poncelet asks her to be his spiritual advisor. In the days leading up to his execution, Préjean extracts a confession from Poncelet, who up until now has denied that he was responsible for two ruthless murders.

In this clip from the film, we see Sister Helen Préjean (Susan Sarandon) take her seat in the observation room next to Poncelet's appeals lawyer. Préjean glances over at three other important witnesses to Matthew Poncelet's execution--the parents of his victims, a teenaged boy and girl Poncelet and his friend savagely tortured and murdered in a deserted wood. As the hour for the execution approaches, guards fasten a series of belts around Poncelet, strapping him down for the lethal injections.

Is Dead Man Walking merely propaganda railing against the death penalty, or is it a balanced account that also takes the victims' families wish for vengeance into consideration? We will take up this question repeatedly as we critique the film in this course.

Dead Man Walking is available at the Knapp Reserve Desk: PN1997.D3985 1996

I Want to Live! (1958)
In the 1950's, Barbara Graham, a career prostitute and forger, was convicted of murdering an elderly, disabled woman in a robbery and home invasion, sentenced to death in California. The film I Want to Live!, which unabashedly promotes the view that Graham was framed, omits much of the evidence supporting Graham's conviction.

Susan Hayward (1917-1975) won the 1958 Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of Graham. The film, directed by Robert Wise, features a score written by Johnny Mandel and played by jazz greats Shelley Mann, Art Farmer, Gerry Mulligan and Red Mitchell.

In this clip, after several brief reprieves from state and federal courts and the governor of California, Graham is executed in the gas chamber. Pellets of cyanide are dropped into a bucket of sulfuric acid; the prisoner dies by inhaling the poisonous vapors. Graham reportedly died within eight minutes after the cyanide hit the acid bucket.

I Want to Live! is available at the Knapp Reserve Desk