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The New Kitty Genovese Documentary Is Like a Visualized 'Serial'

Over 50 years after her death, The Witness investigates the idea that 38 neighbors watched the murder of a young woman in New York and did nothing to stop it.

All photos courtesy of Five More Minutes Productions

It was a case that transfixed New York, and the world. The sensational tale of urban apathy would later spawn 9-1-1 and countless sociology theses, psychology books, and conferences on the topic—it was even used as justification for the Iraq War.

Catherine "Kitty" Genovese was the beautiful young woman who was fatally stabbed in Kew Gardens, Queens, on her walk home from work late one night in 1964, while 38 neighbors—yes, 38—watched or heard her blood-curdling cries for over a half hour. Some closed their windows; others went to bed. But ultimately, they all did one thing: nothing.

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Or, at least, that's what we're led to believe.

James Solomon's new documentary The Witness follows Bill Genovese, Kitty's younger brother. Early on, we see Bill lugging his wheelchair up the stairs, opening doors in the apartment building that overlooks the exact spot where Kitty was stabbed by Winston Moseley, a repeat rapist and murderer, some 50-odd years ago. Bill stares out the window at a city vastly different than where it was in 1964: richer, safer, and certainly more vigilant, the subway safety phrase "if you see something, say something" now a part of its DNA.

Solomon has been working on this film, which premieres next Tuesday at the New York Film Festival, for nearly a decade. It's a story about Bill—who was six at the time of his older sister's death—more so than Kitty. Immediately we're introduced to this sibling who cannot stomach the fact that 38 people witnessed his sister, and close friend, get murdered in cold blood just below their windows, leaving her to die alone.

Nearly 50 years after Kitty's murder, with Solomon in tow, Bill decides to track down those neighbors in question, to find out why they did, or said, nothing, to learn what went through their head when Kitty screamed for help.

For most of his career, Solomon has been a true-crimescreenwriter; in fact, The Witness is his directorial debut. And you can tell where his roots lie. With its film-noirish feel and deeply personal angle, the film flows in a way that is reminiscent of Chinatown.The Witness is shot practically in the first person, with Bill in almost every shot, and narrating almost every scene, as if he's telling us the story, not Solomon. In one take, he's combing through NYPD evidence files. In another, we are shown a panorama of his office: whiteboards of names, timelines, webs; photos of his sister with friends, or with him together when they were growing up, dotting the wall.

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It's like a visualized, yet more deeply personal Serial. Bill has the obsessive investigative drive of Sarah Koenig, but holds the emotions of being the victim's brother and an otherwise ordinary guy who was dealt this inconceivable horror in his life.

And, like the famous podcast, we see, and are only left with, mostly obscured glimpses of the truth.

Over time, Bill comes to meet a neighbor who says that his mother ran downstairs to be with Kitty in her final moments, as she was bleeding to death in the vestibule after being stabbed by Moseley a second time (realizing nobody would do anything to save Genovese, the killer horrifyingly came back to finish the job).

Another witness tells Bill that she did, in fact, call the police, but they said there were already aware of the stabbing. The NYPD's call log shows no such call, casting uncertainty on both the Department and the neighbor's perhaps fictionalized, Brian Williams-like memory.

Regardless, the accounts, and the neighbor's sworn testimony saying she ran downstairs to be with her close friend Kitty, directly contradict the original New York Times front-page story that made the story famous, written by now-deceased reporter Martin Gansberg. In that account, Kitty died alone, with no one coming to help her. The headline read: "37 Who Saw Murder Didn't Call the Police."

We soon learn of the holes in that Times report; the first paragraph is shown being broken down by evidence that Bill has compiled. The infamous number 38, for the most part, could be wrong: It's unclear who saw and heard what, and there are recent reports that the number could have been 49 or even more. It's also unclear what the motives were of A. M. Rosenthal, the influential editor who discovered and assigned the story.

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The New Yorker writer Nicholas Lemann wrote recently, "Rosenthal's convictions about the crime were so powerful that he was impervious to the details of what actually happened." In the documentary, he is portrayed as a man riddled with anxiety about the direction society was changing; extremely concerned, in large part, with a Genovese-induced term, "Bad Samaritan." So maybe he stuck to this story, and its fame, that fostered his conviction, regardless of the facts.

When we see Bill sit down with Rosenthal, the retired news editor refuses to refute the original reporting of 38 witnesses. Or that the reporter may have not told the whole story, or told it correctly, for that matter (something the Times later admitted to, over 30 years later). He does, however, compare the story of Kitty Genovese to that of a jewel: We see a different light every time we look at it. And, in many ways, the same thing can be said of Rosenthal and the media that digested what he said whole.

But again, this is a film about Bill Genovese, and his struggle to come to grips with what whatever happened to his sister that brisk March night. In one telling scene, we see him eating dinner with his two brothers, Frank and Vincent, and their wives. Bill is discussing new developments and leads—how he's trying to interview Moseley, who's on death row in upstate New York—when Frank interjects, "When will you be satisfied?" It is clear that the two older brothers have moved on, even if they didn't want to.

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Bill, of course, hasn't: He tells his brother that one question has led to another, and another question has led to five. The short answer: "I don't know." And the subtext: "Maybe never."

Over time, we come to realize that Bill's entire life has been haunted by the murder of Kitty. He went to Vietnam because he didn't want to be an innocent bystander, like the neighbors who fell asleep to his sister's screams. The war that left him permanently handicapped—something we have to constantly see him deal with, over and over again.

When we are shown the endless archival tapes of Kitty's life—dancing in the park; smoking cigarettes with her friends; driving around in her red Fiat—it's as if we're watching Bill watch them. When we are shown illustrations of Kitty's building—the angles, the apartment numbers, the distance—it's as if we're in Bill's mind, recreating the crime scene to make some sense of it. We even fill in the expressions that he cannot produce at one point: When I watched the film in the theater, the audience jeered at a neighbor who seemed clueless to find out that she was included in the 38 number, while Bill is stuck staring at her, silent but clearly not bemused.

In many ways, we're witnesses to him.

And that's the thing about The Witness, its strength is in the lingering questions you're left with at the ending credits. You're left wondering when this man will achieve closure. You feel terrible that this young woman was ripped away from her family and lover—a secret girlfriend the family never knew, nor met, until Bill does—for no apparent reason. And, most importantly, you're left hoping that the truth of Kitty Genovese's death is still out there somewhere.

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The Witness premieres Tuesday, October 6, at the New York Film Festival.