CAPTIVATED The Trials of Pamela Smart

The young and blond New Hampshire native Pamela Smart was arrested for conspiring to have her husband killed in 1990. A year later, her trial was the first ever to be shown in full on TV. What effect did the constant presence of cameras, the reporting in the media and the production of a TV movie starring Helen Hunt have on the case? Using interviews with people who were there and a wide range of experts, director Jeremiah Zagar explores whether justice was done. Or were people’s heads turned by all the attention, causing them to lose sight of reality? The vain, cartoon-like local reporter, the police officer who arrested Smart and the judge who passed sentence don’t exactly inspire confidence. Did the entire American judicial system fall prey to the laws of reality TV with the arrival of the cameras and the mass need for spectacle? Zagar shows countless grainy archive images of the trial on TV sets he has set up in everyday environments: a hair salon, a garage, a bar – thus highlighting the fact that we all create the story we want to hear from glimpses of reality we pick up here and there. The last, devastating piece of commentary comes from Pamela Smart herself.