MOVIE REVIEW : Lessons in Relentlessly Harsh Reality : ‘Titicut Follies,’ still-shocking 1967 documentary of life at hospital for the criminally insane, screens tonight at UCI.

In the late ‘50s, Frederick Wiseman was teaching law at Boston University when he took his students to see how the state cares for the criminally insane. The visit to Bridgewater State Hospital turned into more than just an interesting field trip; what Wiseman saw changed his life.

Stunned by the conditions, Wiseman became a filmmaker, at first to provide documentation of the real world for his classes, later as a cinematic zealot looking for truth in the worst places. It took more than a few years to finish, but his “Titicut Follies,” about life at Bridgewater, was released in 1967. It screens tonight as part of UC Irvine’s “Inside Outsiders” series.

At the time, Wiseman said this of his unflinchingly frank movie: “It was an experience I could never forget.

“The film became the extension of my teaching--the idea that students could never understand the kind of terrible things that came up in their law cases until they saw them,” he said.

“The same thing goes for the public. It hears about the horrors of Bridgewater, but it can’t make any decisions about what to do about it until it tastes something of the life there.”

What Wiseman saw, and later filmed, was described by more than one critic as “a chamber of horrors.” Inmates, many nude, wander through the filthy institution, often abused and taunted by the staff. The doctors aren’t much better, revealing a disinterest that can be chilling. The few sympathetic workers just make the others seem outrageous.

The movie became a cause celebre almost immediately.

After the film premiered in New York, a Massachusetts Superior Court judge ruled that “Titicut Follies” invaded the patients’ privacy and ordered that all negatives and prints be burned.

Some thought the ruling just; many others felt it was the worst kind of politicking to protect the system. The film became scandalous by illuminating a scandal.

Subsequent motions and decisions kept it from being destroyed, but “Titicut Follies” was still suppressed for nearly 25 years. In 1991, the court ban was finally overturned and Wiseman’s movie began circulating again, especially at art houses and college campuses.

The imagery is as difficult to take now as it must have been in 1967, once the deceptively pleasant opening scenes give way to more abrasive visuals.

The first look at Bridgewater--when the inmates are trying to stage a desperately sad musical that provides the film’s title--shifts to a blase psychiatrist barely paying attention during an interview with a young man who has sexually abused an 11-year-old girl.

It’s clear this patient won’t receive help, even though he asks for it. He’s not alone. One of the most painful passages comes when an old patient is force-fed through a tube in his nose. A while later, he’s being dressed in an ill-fitting suit, apparently for burial--his meticulous care in death is the best treatment he’s had at Bridgewater.

Wiseman’s style, the one he honed in such other documentaries as “Meat,” “Central Park” and “High School,” is blunt and provocatively straightforward. There’s no narration and no music; Wiseman doesn’t let distractions get in the way of the facts.

Frederick Wiseman’s “Titicut Follies” screens tonight at 7 and 9 at UC Irvine’s Student Center, Crystal Cove Auditorium. $2 and $4. (714) 856-6379.