Movie Review: The Witness

The facts surrounding Kitty Genovese's violent death are questioned and reexamined in a new documentary "The Witness." Time Warner Cable News film critic Neil Rosen filed the following review.

In March of 1964, 28-year-old Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death in the middle of the night on a street in Kew Gardens, Queens. According to a front page story that ran back then in The New York Times, 38 people watched her being murdered from their apartment windows, and despite her screams for help, not one person did anything to help her. This reported incident of "bystander apathy" alarmed the nation.

First-time filmmaker James Solomon, along with Kitty's brother Bill, do a diligent job, spending 12 years trying to find out the real truth. Tracking down some of the witnesses who are still alive 50 years later and talking to friends and associates of Kitty, they discover some fascinating revelations.

To begin with, there were people who claim they did do something to help her. Some folks called the police, while one woman cradled her barely alive body in her arms waiting for help that never arrived. It turns out that the The Times exaggerated the story just to sell papers.

Her brother Bill, now in a wheelchair, having lost his legs in Vietnam, is as much at the heart of the film as Kitty. Obsessed with finding out the truth, he learns a lot about his sister's life and even talks to Kittys killer's son. For the finale he stages a recreation, with an actress, of that horrific night at the actual scene of the crime - which I found a bit much.

But that aside, it's a fascinating documentary that debunks the myth as it tries to separate fact from fiction and in the process offers up an eye opening history lesson.