Caged (1950)

Waste of time

Captivating movie !

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Scared 19 year old Marie Allen arrives at a women's state prison. She was sentenced for 1 to 15 years after her late husband Tom tried to steal $40. She is found to be two months pregnant. Caring superintendent Ruth Benton (Agnes Moorehead) offers hopes of probation in ten months. She loses that hope under the sadistic matron Evelyn Harper's cruel control. Her stepfather refuses to let her mother take custody of her new baby. She is forced to put it up for adoption. When inmate Elvira Powell arrives, there is a rivalry with hardened head criminal Kitty Stark.On the surface, one expects this to be an exploitation affair but that's not the case. It's actually a serious movie about a young woman sent to prison. It is harsh without being camp. It's almost a scared straight and social commentary movie. Eleanor Parker does a good melodramatic innocent. This is good for its time and surprisingly has several nominations.

Imprisoned as an accomplice to armed robbery, a wide-eyed pregnant teen is gradually hardened by the system in this seminal prison movie starring Eleanor Parker. Disowned by her stepfather and with her husband killed in the robbery, Parker plays a character very alone in the world and while her transformation may be predictable, she absolutely nails it. There is a great moment when the ostensibly toughened Parker shows her inmates how to successfully perform a swindle and the camera lingers on her afterwards as she stares at her hands and wonders what she has become. Parker's most powerful scene though involves an innocent kitten caught up the madness of the prison bureaucracy. Such corruption and cruelty is in fact at the forefront of the film -- something that does not quite work as well as it sounds. Agnes Moorehead is a talented actress, but the film seems to come to a stand-still whenever her head warden is in focus. Moorehead's futile attempts to clean up the prison system and get rid of sadistic guards smacks of self-righteousness, and while it makes sense to "treat prisoners as human beings" as she professes, Moorehead drones on to the point that the message is as subtle as a sledgehammer. Her final scene with Parker is admittedly great though and allows the film to end on a potent note. The best element of all here though is the sound design; whether it be the typewriter keys drowning out Parker's words at the start of the movie, the intrusive ringing bells or the cries of the mentally ill inmates at night, the movie's audio design always enhances the story.

Kudos to TCM's 2015 "Summer of Darkness" for showing this seldom-viewed "film noir." For my money, it's the best "women in prison" film that's ever been made, far superior to the sexploitation films in this genre in recent decades. The beginning shot is a classic noir shot inside the paddy wagon taking the women, including the protagonist Marie Allen played by Eleanor Parker in an Oscar-nominated role, to the prison. We're looking out at the small wired screen at the back of the wagon and we get a sense of confinement, of being "caged", and then we hear the gruff command (see summary above) that starts the women's entry into the prison system. The film conveys a dark and gritty "social realism" that Warner Brothers seemed to specialize in at this time.While the prison is run by a progressive warden played by Agnes Morehead, the prisoners are cruelly harassed by a truly monstrous matron played by Hope Emerson, who also received an Oscar nomination. In this women's prison there are naive young women, CPs (common prostitutes), and hardened criminals who endeavor to instruct the younger ones in the ways of crime. There are hints of lesbianism, a staple for a prison film, but quite muted as expected for 1950. The truly marvelous thing to watch is Eleanor Parker's slow evolution from 19-year-old innocent to hardened aspiring criminal when she's released. The social message in "Caged" is that the prison system of 1950 was better at promoting recidivism than rehabilitation.

Caged is directed by John Cromwell and adapted by Virginia Kellogg from her own story Women Without men that was co-written with Bernard C. Schoenfeld. It stars Eleanor Parker, Agnes Moorehead, Ellen Corby, Betty Garde and Hope Emerson. Music is by Max Steiner and cinematography by Carl E. Guthrie.Teenager Marie Allen (Parker) is sent to a women's prison after being found guilty of being an accomplice in a robbery, a robbery that saw her husband killed. She's also pregnant and will have to have the child in the prison. Struggling to come to terms with her incarceration and the tough regime overseen by brutish warden Harper (Emerson), Marie comes to realise that she may have to go through a major character transformation to survive.Unfairly tagged as camp and sounding on synopsis like what would become a cheese laden staple of women's prison movies, Caged is actually rather powerful film making. The deconstruction and subsequent transformation of a young woman who clearly doesn't belong behind those walls, is bleakly told. The prison is a foreboding place, the lady character's reactions to their surroundings and way of life are emotionally charged.Frank in its portrayal of prison life back then, but sly with its insinuations of sexual proclivities and criminal doings on the inside, the writing has a crafty edge most befitting the sombre tone that pervades the picture. Parker leads off the list of great performances to bring the drama to life, and with Guthrie's black and white photography superbly emphasising claustrophobia and pungent emotional turmoil, it rounds out as a thoroughly gripping piece of film. With an ending that's appropriately biting as well. 7.5/10