Better Late Then Never

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Blistering performances.

Caged (1950)A prison movie, and a good one. But there are the usual stereotypes—the bad warden and the good warden, the bad convicts and the good convicts. The hopelessness. The feeling of injustice. The one large twist is that ti's a prison for women.The is a Warner Bros film and fits into a long tradition they have of social justice themes (the most famous early one is "I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang"). So the leading woman, played by Eleanor Parker, takes on a kind of martyr role because it's clear she shouldn't have been sent to jail in the first place, and we pity her. She is really good at the innocent young girl (with perfect hair), though if she's trying to channel Joan Fontaine she falls a step short. As she hardens up through the movie (as the parole board does its caricatured best to be idiots) she gets no more convincing, though maybe a little more fun.It's probably impossible to really pull of a movie like this in 1950 without ditching the censorship rules. But there was no attempt to make the prison actually horrible, which I assume it must have been, and it's completely unintegrated (all white) which may or may not have been the case back then (I don't know). The result is a kind of safe, and sometimes false, version that feels increasingly like Hollywood.It's good Hollywood, don't get me wrong. The movie is one of the better prison movies from the era (and there are a surprising number of them). Just don't look for insight or even any level of narrative surprise here. Do check out another strong if uninspiring role from Agnes Moorehead, and pay attention to the startling, fresh performance by Jane Darwell (who I knew from the role as the mother in "The Grapes of Wrath" a decade earlier).

Well made film prison film and a must see for anyone that likes Elenor Parker, who is good, but Agnes Moorehead and Hope Emerson are even better. Emerson (nominated for an Oscar) is brutal as she commands the pregnant Marie Allen (Elenor Parker) to scrub the prison floor when she learns that Allen is unable to pay her way into a decent prison job. The use of period-contextual prison jargon makes this film extremely interesting. The one-sheet from this film is fantastic!!!! It features Marie Allen's fellow inmates: Claire, a queen of the prison vice-ring, Smoochie - a street-lamp gal, and Emma, the prison matron's patsy. Finally, similar to the ending in Johnny Apollo (1940), and to quote the one-sheet, "She was part-good before-She's ALL BAD NOW!"

Caged is a taut, well played prison drama with Eleanor Parker as Marie Allen, a naive, pregnant nineteen year old who gets a stretch in stir for a small time crime. She struggles to maintain her innocence and holds onto the hope of an early parole and leading a clean life. A hardened inmate tries to recruit here into a crime ring on the outside but she resists until all of her defenses are finally broken by life on the inside. Prison life becomes hopeless after Marie's parole is denied and her mother refuses to care for her newborn, forcing her to put him up for adoption. She finally leaves prison a hardened woman with an underworld hookup waiting for her on the outside. It's a dark, film noir type ending for a movie like this- no happy ending for our heroine, even though she finally does get out of prison. There's some social commentary about prison reform woven into this movie. Agnes Moorhead plays the concerned, reform-minded warden against rigid prison officials and a corrupt, hard minded matron played by Hope Emerson (who made a career in tough woman roles). They make a good pitch in this movie, but progressive ideas in corrections were still some years away when this movie was made. We can only imagine what the writers of this movie would say if they were around to see how those reforms have worked out.

Caged is a fairly straightforward prison movie. It is set inside a female prison and told from the point of view of a young and innocent female prisoner. The politics inside the prison involving fellow inmates and wardens forms a major part of the film. The loss of innocence is the film's major theme. Eleanor Parker as the innocent young woman is seriously underrated. Jan Sterling from Ace in the Hole also makes an appearance in a small role. The film's final scene when Parker enters a car full of men establishes the complete corruption of her soul. I had never heard of Parker before I watched this film. She is beautiful and her tortured expressions (like when she tries to save the kitten) made you feel for her. She even shaves her hair off for the role. The actress who played the mean and sadistic warden was very good too. There are some finely/cleverly composed shots in this film. Like the one right after the prison riot. The head warden is admonishing the rioting females and behind her two junior wardens hold torches which provide the lighting. The warden's face is not visible so even though she is shouting at the prisoners, we don't really know what she is really thinking. It is noir cinematography at its very best.