Caged!
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Movie Reviews of Caged!
Movie Review: "They Flopped me Back!"
Summary: 5 Stars
Sure it's campy, but it's also a great movie with some fine acting, nice cinematography and a good story. It manages to be a touching loss of innocense tale. If it were just trash, it wouldn't have the following it does. It's also a hoot!Movie Review: Involving and Heartrending Indictment of the Prison System Circa 1950.
Summary: 4 Stars
The trailer for "Caged" exclaims: "Warner Brothers reveals the Menace that Turns Today's First Offenders into Tomorrow's Legion of the Lost". This 1950 film makes no attempt to obscure its social agenda, which is to promote an overhaul of the American prison system, a system which the filmmakers felt created and protected criminality as much as it punished it. To this end, we visit a women's prison, where a clean-cut, pleasant young woman who made one mistake will be compelled by circumstances to embrace a life of crime. Corruption, physical abuse, and the mixing of first offenders with hardened criminals are the ills that infect the prison and victimize inmates who might otherwise go straight.
19-year-old Marie Allen (Eleanor Parker) has been convicted as an accessory in an ill-fated hold-up that left her husband dead. Delicate, scrupulously polite, pregnant, and terrified, Marie arrives at the State Women's Prison to serve her time. The progressive prison Superintendent Ruth Benton (Agnes Moorehead) is sympathetic to the plight of first offenders but struggles constantly just to obtain adequate funding to run the facility. Marie is placed under the authority of sadistic, corrupt prison matron Harper (Hope Emerson), who keeps her job through political connections. Marie is determined not to misstep and be paroled in 10 months, but everything and everyone work against her.
We never lose sight of the fact that Marie is "caged" -by bars and walls, and by corruption, selfishness, and misguided paternalism. The claustrophobia, noise, and humiliation of the prison environment are present in every scene. I don't know how widespread the behavior in "Caged" was in American prisons circa 1950. But it's interesting that the film doesn't only attack the obvious sources of trouble -corruption and political apathy - but also condemns the self-righteous, well-meaning parole board, who deem the horrible prison environment preferable to freedom for a young woman with "no favorable home conditions and no beneficent influences on the outside." Accurate or not, "Caged" is very hard-hitting and presents Marie's loss of autonomy with frightening empathy.
The DVD (Warner 2007): Picture and sound quality are good. The only bonus feature is a theatrical trailer. Subtitles are available in English, English SDH, French, and Spanish.
Movie Review: "Quit shaking the tambourine"
Summary: 4 Stars
CAGED was written with great insight by Virginia Kellogg, who posed as an inmate in a real women's prison in order to gain true authenticity for the subject. The results still speak for themselves. With no overly dramatic pretense or campy stunts, CAGED is a powerful character study about the transformation of one young woman, forced into prison for a crime she barely committed.
Marie Allen (Eleanor Parker, "Detective Story") is arrested and sent to jail as an accomplice for a gas station robbery. Her unemployed husband, in bad need of money, was shot and killed in the attack. Once inside the prison, Marie learns that she is two months pregnant--and there will be no sympathy for the jailbird mother. Sadistic head Matron Harper (Hope Emerson) makes Marie's life a misery, forcing the expectant mother to spend hours scrubbing the floors. Marie's only salvation lies with the kindly superintendent Mrs Benton (Agnes Moorehead), and the possibility of getting an early parole. But with Matron Harper on the warpath, Marie's chances of escaping her hell are as bleak as the jailhouse walls...
Eleanor Parker's amazing, Oscar-nominated performance is the icing on the cake for this riveting movie. Her transformation from naive innocent to hard-boiled jailbird is a marvel to witness. Observe the way her body language and the tone of her voice changes during the film. CAGED also features some of the most talented actresses of the period (Lee Patrick, Ellen Corby, Betty Garde, Jan Sterling, Jane Darwell and Olive Deering), all free from makeup and the glamorous trappings of regular Hollywood fare.
Nothing about this film seems false or calculated. The characters are very real and fleshed-out, everyone has their own story to tell. You'll be able to find new aspects and angles each time you watch it. The minimalist score is provided by Max Steiner. CAGED is a rare gem that deserves to be rediscovered.
The DVD includes the trailer. (Single-sided, single-layer disc).
Movie Review: "Don't kid me, Harper's first name is filth."
Summary: 4 Stars
Eleanor Parker stars as Marie Allen in 1950's "Caged." Marie comes from a poor family but never had trouble with the law; however, she married young and her husband, in an act of desperation, holds up a gas station for $40. Her husband is killed in the robbery, and Marie, who drove the getaway car, is given 1-15 years in prison. When she arrives at the prison, she's a naive scared 19-year-old girl. When she leaves, she's a hardened woman who is likely to become a repeat offender. What happens in between makes up the bulk of the plot, as the women react to being "caged."
By today's standards, "Caged" is pretty tame, verging on unrealistic; however, for a 1950s movie, "Caged" is remarkably gritty, and it's often considered to be the granddaddy of women's prison movies. Fortunately, the movie also provides very good character sketches of the different women in Marie's prison block. The acting is uniformly good, with Parker scoring her first Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Her progression from innocent waif to bitter criminal is quite believable and effective. Hope Emerson also received an Academy Award nomination for her supporting turn as Evelyn Harper, the scheming prison matron who taunts the women. Ellen Corby (probably best known as Grandma Walton) has fun in her role as a shifty murderess. The film also features Agnes Moorehead as the sympathetic superintendant; I usually love Moorehead, but she's a tad boring here.
The women in prison genre has been done many times since "Caged," often in a more sensationalistic style. Nevertheless, the movie is interesting and well worth watching. Some of the lines are great fun. Hope Emerson's matron character has some of the best, including when she tells the cell block, "Line up, you tramps. This ain't no upstairs delicatessen." I also laughed out loud when Marie says at the death of one of the characters, "Kindly omit the flowers." Some really terrific material that borders on camp.
Movie Review: Parker is outstanding!
Summary: 4 Stars
"Caged" (1950) is not as campy as the package would have you believe; the majority of this film is quite serious with a number of standout performances. Eleanor Parker is Marie Allen, a 19 year old who was somewhat innocently involved in her husband's botched armed robbery attempt (he is killed). Marie is sentenced to prison and mixed in with a lot of hardened criminals, an evil corrupt matron (Hope Emerson), and a few loonies to boot. It also turns out that Marie is pregnant; what a place to have a baby! Ruth Benton (Agnes Moorehead) runs the facility, and understands that mixing first-time offenders with hardened criminals is a bad formula; however, all of her attempts to improve the system fall on the deaf ears of the Board of Directors who only look at dollars and cents and have no desire to fix the system. Eleanor Parker gives a standout performance as Marie; watching her go from a scared naive girl to a hardened prisoner is amazing...at first it's difficult to believe that Parker could have been cast as the evil Baroness in "The Sound of Music," but watching her performance and transformation, it is not difficult to understand what a talented actress she was. Both Parker and Emerson were nominated for Oscars for this film (as was the script). Moorehead, Ellen Corby, Jane Darwell, and Betty Garden also give standout performances. This film was directed by John Cromwell, a very noted director of the day. Nothing low-budget here; it's really a shame that this has been stuck in a "Cult Camp Classic" series, as I feel it does this film a disservice. Don't look for a happy ending, either; this film doesn't have one. It is meant to be a condemnation of the prison system at the time and this film does not go easy on its topic. A theatrical trailer included. Picture quality is very good (a black and white film), and so is the sound.