Sin remisión

"Caged" is the rare kind of movie that works both as a film to take seriously and as a camp classic.

Eleanor Parker plays Marie Allen, a naive 19-year-old who goes to prison as an accomplice in an armed robbery staged by her loser husband. She doesn't really belong there, but despite the efforts of the prison administrator (Agnes Moorehead) to help her get paroled, she remains locked up, only to be turned into a jaded criminal by the very institution that's supposed to reform her.

The film is full of rough stuff, atrocities and indignities heaped one after another on Marie or the other inmates. Women are beaten, subjected to psychological abuse, thrown into solitary confinement. Their heads are shaved, they have babies who they're forced to give up for adoption. One woman freaks out and breaks a window with her bare hands, and we see the blood spurting from her severed arteries. Another woman hangs herself. Presiding over all is sadistic warden Evelyn Harper, played memorably by the gigantic actress Hope Emerson, who abuses her power so egregiously that she eventually gets stabbed in the chest with a fork by one crazy inmate while Parker's character hisses "Kill her! Kill her!"

The screenplay tosses out one memorable line after another -- my favorite is Parker's departing words to Moorehead when Marie finally gets her parole: "Thanks for the haircut." But for all the women-behind-bars sensationalism, the film is no joke. It's well directed by John Cromwell, who clearly wanted to make a serious indictment of a flawed system, and if it's lurid, it's also effective. I laughed a lot, but I also found myself outraged.

In addition to Parker, Emerson (both Oscar nominated, by the way) and Moorehead, the cast also includes Jan Sterling and Betty Garde as two of the more memorable inmates.

Grade: A

For reasons I cannot fathom, this film sometimes ends up on lists of the worst movies of all time; this despite Oscar nominations for Eleanor Parker and Hope Emerson. It has some of the best acting performances around, runs the gamut on "stock" characters, but well done and great black & white filming and lighting. It's terrifically engaging and one quickly gets wrapped up with the characters, some of whom are morally ambiguous and some of whom are just evil, and how they choose to cope in unbearable circumstances. It's a great movie and deserving of a lot more credit than it's gotten in the past. 10/10.

At nearly fifty years old, 'Caged" isn't quite like today's women-in-prison sexploitation flicks--and that's good. But this could certainly be a prototype for those movies. Many of the same elements are here: an innocent young woman wrongly sent to prison, tough and bitter cons, unfeeling and corrupt matrons--there's even a shower scene! You'll have to look hard for any allusions to homosexuality, however; the references are so oblique that they're practically nonexistant. Still, this movie pack a wallop. It's effective and affecting.

It's a manipulative film but you won't mind. Eleanor Parker projects all the innocence and vulnerability of a wounded fawn in the starring role. As one rotten break after another befalls her in the joint, she loses that innocence and becomes transformed into a classic hardened con, a transformation greatly aided by the seemingly simple device of a head-shaving she receives from a cruel matron. The film has a plainly understood message: if no effort is made to rehabilitate inmates, all a prison is good for is to educate criminals in their chosen vocation, crime. That's another big difference between this film and the junky sexploitation pictures of more recent years--the latter don't have a message.

John Cromwell's Caged is an exceptionally made film for the most part, a bold expose for its time on the prison system. There are many overt visual techniques which make the cinematography cloudy and suggestive, very impressive acting and a fair deal of realism.

Eleanor Parker fashions one of the most stunning screen transformations in recent memory. From the beginning, she delineates all the chastity and defenselessness of an injured yearling. As one foul interval after another follows her, that unworldliness rusts, her clean hands are continuously stained and she boils over into the vintage hard-bitten felon. If no attempt is made to adjust felons, all a prison is good for is to further indoctrinate criminals in their pegged rackets.

Of all of them, the most indelible impression is made by the gruff voice and towering physicality of Hope Emerson, who mustered all of the feelings of inadequacy one frankly imagines she suffered in her time to scald the morale of the inmates over which she abuses the power she sadistically relishes. That's not to say she is a "cow" surrounded by sumptuous, insatiable inmates. Cromwell indeed surrounds Parker with jowled, bug-eyed, bony, gnarly women. The corporeal presence of the vast majority of the convicts speaks volumes to why, in 1950 America, these women led the lives they did. And Parker, sent to prison, after a botched armed robbery attempt by her equally young husband who is killed, leaving her with an accomplice technicality as a curious wedding gift, is pitted among them in nightmarish situations. Her entirely unnatural experience inside begins with her discovery that she is pregnant. She gives birth to a healthy baby and grants custody to her mother to get the baby back after she is released, but her apathetic mother gives the child up for adoption for good because the child does not harmonize with the grandmother's habits.

Parker is then left with all the abandonments of the most deeply felt order: Her husband, her freedom, her child, her mother. Subsequently, one need just run down the characters surrounding her to map the bearings of the angle the drama will take: Manipulative and vicious superintendent Hope Emerson, hard-boiled ringleader Kitty Stark played by the boldly unglamorous Betty Garde, and corruption matron Lee Patrick. How does a sympathetic warden, Agnes Moorehead, match the impact of the environment she finds that she provides someone like Parker? The final handful of shots endure.

This is the angry story of the beautiful Marie Allan (Eleanor Parker) , an one-mistake girl , the men betrayed her and the law forgot inside the big house for women , she can't afford to let stay at large now . We have seen what the matron (Hope Emerson) does to women in the prison , we have seen women tortured , sweated and mistreated and a sensational scandal rock women's prison .

This film dared to tell the whole hideous truth about brutal cruelty by a villain jailer . This is a new kind of picture , it's a scenario writer's idea (Virginia Kellog screenwriter's "Women without Men") of a women's prison , authentic experiences of convicts in a gaol that is a hell on earth . Screen's most gripping drama of violence and gals on rampage in prison riot . It's a story about it what happens to women without men , the shocking tale of one warden against sixty inmates . The movie arises a questions : Will she come out woman or wildcat? , is the coming out good or is the coming out to avenge the torments and terrors that make a jail for women a college for the crime? . Hope Emerson as a cruel , sensation-hungry nasty warden is magnificent , she organizes a crack newspaper campaign announcing against prison chief , the great Agnes Morehead . Former L.A. Times reporter and screenwriter Virginia Kellogg's exciting plot surpasses even ¨I am a fugitive from a chain gang¨ film . Virginia Kellogg pulled some strings to incarcerate herself in a woman's prison . She then wrote a book about it , which was a kind of almanac of everything she witnessed while in prison , then had her write the script , which was nominated for an Academy Award . Warner Bros has filmed with all of the power and realism at its command . The thrilling musical score by the classic Max Steiner . And John Cromwell, under contract at Warner Bros directed with genius . The picture obtained three nominations for Academy Award : the best principal actress (Eleanor Parker) , support cast (Hope Emerson) and the best original screenplay (Virginia Kellogg).

The film is remade as ¨House of Women¨(1962) with Shirley Knight and originated a real sub-genre and spreading several sequels , imitations and copies as ¨Women's prison¨(1955) with Ida Lupino and ¨Girls in Prison¨ with Joan Taylor. Besides , exploitation flicks as ¨Naked cage¨ (1982) directed by Paul Nicholas and ¨Chained Heat¨ with Linda Blair .