Caged

This movie is probably the best example of the "women in prison" genre. It's a delightful combination of noir, camp and drama. Eleanor Parker gives an excellent performance. Her slow transformation from a naive young woman to a hardened prisoner was fascinating and very realistic. This is especially evident at the end of the film when there is the photographic comparison between her character when she enters prison to when she leaves. I also like that the film does not end on a positive note. It ends bittersweet. On one hand, it's good that she's out, on the other hand, you know that Agnes Moorehead's character has correctly predicted Parker's destiny.

Moorehead's prison superintendent character was excellent and is what keeps the film from being over the top. She remains the calm, collected heart of the movie. She's a nice contrast from Hope Emerson's bonkers matron. If Moorehead and Emerson's respective characters had both been over the top nasty, then this film would have definitely been more campy. Likewise, if both characters had been like Moorehead's, then the film would be unrealistic. Emerson's matron was so delightfully horrid that you actually cheer for the Kitty Stark character in the dramatic cafeteria scene.

Lee Patrick is such a fantastic character actress and she can play so many different types of characters very well. What's delightful about many of her characterizations is that no matter how refined her character appears on the outside, there's always a layer of trashiness. The possible exception to this from the films of hers I've seen is The Maltese Falcon. In this film, she's known as "The Vice Queen" who runs a shoplifting syndicate and ends up having to serve a short sentence in the prison.

Ladies They Talk About is another favorite women in prison film of mine, but it is more of a country club prison than the one Eleanor Parker ends up in.

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.

I saw this movie in Hollywood as part of the annual film noir festival at the American Cinematheque. This film has lost none of its ability to move an audience. Not only is it a good prison drama, but it is a good example of film noir moviemaking as well.

It was a bit of daring to show how corrupt the prison system can be and "inmates decaying" as one character put it.The lead character (Eleanor Parker) goes from being an innocent to becoming as hard as anyone else in the prison system due to the efforts of her matron and chief tormentor (Hope Emerson). It is because of this transformation that the film goes from being a routine prison drama to a first-rate noir thriller.

Jan Sterling, who plays "Smoochie" in the film, was at the screening and spoke afterward. She said director John Cromwell (father of character actor James Cromwell) did a great job of making you feel like you were in prison. She said by the end of the shoot, the performers felt like they were really confined. Parker, Emerson and the script by Virginia Kellogg and Bernard C. Schoenfeld were nominated for Oscars.

This movie is magnificent and, being one of the first of the genre, was done perfectly. The casting is great - Parker and Emerson deserved their nominations, and Lee Patrick, Agnes Moorehead and others make indelible impressions. Parker's flick of a cigarette at the end was sublime.

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.