That’s how Marie got where she is even if she doesn’t seem meant for such a hardened life.Īgnes Moorehead delivers one of her most sympathetic performances as a champion of rehabilitation who unfortunately is fighting a losing battle against the system as we soon see. At only 19 years of age, she seems like no more than a girl and yet she’s already been married, had her husband fatally killed during a bank robbery, is pregnant with a child, and has an accessory rap pinned on her. Marie Allen (Eleanor Parker) is one of the first-time offenders who comes in with the new batch of prisoners. Likewise, the scenes of incarceration bring to mind images of The Snake Pit (1946) and Shock Corridor (1964) but even those films were about mental illness and the lack of quality care, not so much the abominable corruption that begins to coalesce within prison walls. Caged has not even a pretense for laughter. In that case, the narrative is preoccupied with the intricacies of their frivolous catty ways and malicious gossip. It’s a film that dances on the complete opposite spectrum of George Cukor’s The Women (1939) another film that is dominated by the lives of female characters. She freely channels a bit of the flustered timidity of Joan Fontaine early on only to transform into a completely different person entirely. But if Caged is any indication, she is most certainly worthy of more credit. Director John Cromwell had a long career in Hollywood, helmed some quality film noir, and became a subsequent casualty of the Blacklist, but this just might be his finest effort.įurthermore, despite being an actress of some acclaim, I must admit that even I forget about Eleanor Parker aside from her well-remembered appearance in The Sound of Music (1965). Caged proves to be a stark, even uncompromising picture for the 1950s.
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