By showing the murders after we have already been notified of the gory details, the filmmaker is able to create an unbearable sense of inevitability.

Richard Brooks’ “In Cold Blood” is one of the most beautifully photographed and emotionally moving films ever made. In it we follow the two cold-blooded killers, Perry Smith and Dick Hickock.

This film deserves to be mentioned alongside “Citizen Kane” for its complex visual compositions, lighting schemes and editing techniques. There are frequent cuts that match visually and aurally, transitioning us seamlessly from scene to scene.

But these cuts aren’t used for purely stylistic purposes. They work toward bridging the separate stories and causing the wide array of characters to seemingly inhabit the same narrative space.

At one point, the technique suggests the proximity of the murderers to their eventual victims by letting the distant sounds of a passing train trail from a scene of Perry and Dick talking to the following scene of the soon-to-be-murdered mother washing her family’s dishes.

The film starts out with a jazzy Quincy Jones score that sets the table for a cool, ’60s caper flick. It is half reminiscent of Jean-Pierre Melville’s French caper films and the subsequent “New Wave” films they inspired.

It is not until the film is over when one realizes that this music style is abandoned not more than midway through in favor of an infrequent and more conventional score. The score of the first half seems to be in conflict with the dark inevitability of the second.

The infamous murder scenes occur late in the film in the form of an extended flashback. By showing the murders after we have already been notified of the gory details, the filmmaker is able to create an unbearable sense of inevitability.

The film builds an uneasy anticipation in the early parts of these scenes by having no score, only the sounds of the quiet country landscape. When the murders finally occur, it is almost a relief.

It is in this quiet buildup where the film rivals the brutal silence of “The Honeymoon Killers.” It is only when the murders finally take place with a dizzying sequence of fast edits, a melodramatic score comes into play.

The final act is played out choppily, constantly jumping ahead in time and with the added cold detachment of a monotone narrator. The narrator causes a massive shift in point of view that almost derails the film from its path to greatness.

But “In Cold Blood” redeems itself in a tragic final sequence where we see the two murderers receive their penalty of death. We are put right into the head of the condemned Perry Smith through a series of point-of-view shots and an ever-present and ever-loudening sound of a heartbeat.

The reason for being of a film like this, much like the more recent “Monster,” is not to necessarily garner sympathy for murderers, but to make the point that these acts are committed by troubled human beings who weren’t predestined to be evil.

They could have led entirely different lives had they received the emotional and mental care they required early on.

Suggesting that murder is wholly preventable and as much the fault of society as the murderers themselves continues to be a bold and unpopular idea. As one character observes, six people have died and three families have been ruined — all, as the film argues, in cold blood.

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