Wisconsin Death Trip

Wisconsin Death Trip (1999)

Inspired by the book of the same name, film-maker James Marsh relays a tale of tragedy, murder and mayhem that erupted behind the respectable facade of Black River Falls, Wisconsin in the 19th century.

Date of release
1999-09-05
TMDB
5.7 / 10 (29)
Runtime
1h 16m
Genres
Documentary, Crime
Director
James Marsh

Casting

Interesting facts

Wisconsin Death Trip is a 1999 docudrama film written for the screen and directed by James Marsh, based on the 1973 historical nonfiction book of the same name by Michael Lesy. The film dramatizes a series of macabre incidents that took place in and around Black River Falls, Wisconsin in the late-19th century. It utilizes silent black-and-white reenactment footage contrasted with contemporary color footage of the region, along with voice-over narration by Sir Ian Holm, orating contemporaneous newspaper articles written about the occurrences. Music featured in the film includes DJ Shadow and John Cale.

Production

Documentary filmmaker James Marsh began developing a docudrama film adaptation of Michael Lesy's 1973 nonfiction book of the same name after moving to the United States in 1995. Prior to this, Marsh had produced works for the BBC series Arena. The BBC provided seed money to help finance Wisconsin Death Trip, and Marsh also acquired funding from a Norwegian American immigrant fund in the United States.

Marsh met with New York-based film producer Maureen Ryan, who agreed to produce the feature despite it having "no obvious commercial prospects and a tiny budget provided by the BBC". According to Marsh, the film took approximately four years to develop between its initial production and filming.

By Marsh's account, Wisconsin Death Trip was a protracted process: "I did it in episodes. I'd shoot in one season. And then reflect on what I'd done and go shoot some more the next season. Then run out of money. Then go back again." To shoot the reenactment footage featured in the film, Marsh hired Danish cinematographer Eigil Bryld, with whom his wife had attended school in Denmark.

Marsh took advantage of numerous preserved historical homes and other sites in Wisconsin to shoot the film, as they contained "historically correct, sometimes priceless antiques" that matched the necessary period setting. He stated that the crew was granted permission to shoot at "almost every historical site that we requested," and that they offered a nominal donation in exchange for the historical site managers' allowing them to film there.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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