À Margem da Vida

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.

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.

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.

This film, of the genre, women in prison, or incarcerated.... is the best.. I cant understand why its not available on VHS or DVD !!!?? Brilliant performances by Eleanor Parker, Agnes Moorehead, and especially, Hope Emerson, as the prison matron... were all outstanding!! Parker & Emerson were Oscar nominated, and in a year (1950) which gave us, "All About Eve" , "Sunset Blvd", and others, that was no easy feat!!...Parkers beauty and innocence gave the film its sensitivity & vulnerability... Moorehead was also outstanding (as always) but Emerson defined the role of prison matron.. forever!!.wow what a monster....!!! what a performance.. !!watch for the lesbian moments as Emerson attempts to control the "girls" esp. Parker.. Nice moments by Gertrude Hoffmann (later Mrs Odettes in TVs "My Little Margie",) as the older inmate.... and the entire cast... a gem... dont miss.... and please reissue on video......

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.