There may be infinite ways you can look at any work of art but I see two principle ways you can look at 1949's Caught: either as a left-wing fantasy about the intrinsically superior virtue of the working class or as a restless battle between two vindictive, psychologically disturbed people. I find the latter interpretation more interesting but Lee Garmes' enchantingly dark cinematography and lead performances from Robert Ryan, Barbara Bel Geddes, and James Mason make this a dynamite noir either way.
I watched this movie on Wednesday night and it wasn't until about twenty minutes in I realised I'd seen it before. And here's my review from nine years ago. It's a playful review that doesn't probe too deeply in the film, focusing more on the opening scene where Barbara Bel Geddes washes her feet, but I might have made something more of the opening screenshot I used.
While she dreams about a life of wealth and comfort, Leonora (Bel Geddes) spreads her legs and swats flies between them. This seems a potent symbol of the methods she'll eventually use to marry into wealth, as much as she does have pangs of conscience about it. After being invited to a yacht party thanks to blind luck--catching the eye of a customer at a department store where she works--she's reluctant to go through with attending the party despite having spent time and money on a dress and makeover. Her very reluctance to go says volumes about her motives when she finally does.
She happens to run across the wealthy guy running the party, Smith Ohlrig (Robert Ryan), before she even gets on the boat. She accepts a ride with him but balks at going into his house. There's an abrupt jump cut to Smith in his psychiatrist's office talking about how he'd broken up with Leonora after four dates. When the psychiatrist implies Smith doesn't know how to be intimate with people, he immediately calls Leonora and starts to take steps to marrying her, apparently out of sheer contrariness. Despite the fact that Leonora's internal conflict is supposedly the centrepiece of the film, we don't have a single scene of Smith's courtship of her or of the moment where she consents to marry him.
There's another jump cut, now to Leonora alone in Ohlrig's mansion with Franzi (Curt Bois), a servant of Ohlrig's who plays piano and makes catty jokes about how Ohlrig is a monster. Ohlrig does seem to be paranoid and becomes jealous enough when Leonora laughs at a colleague's joke that he orders both of them out of the room. But Ohlrig never physically abuses her. Nevertheless, Leonora is unhappy enough that when Ohlrig suggests she go away, she takes him up on the offer. She goes to work as a secretary for the saintly Dr. Quinada (James Mason), a paediatrician serving the poorest, working class citizens of New York.
When critics talk about a film noir like Detour, they talk about how the movie's narrative being through Tom Neal's point of view clouds the events depicted with suspicion, especially the people who just happen to die around him, from whose deaths he gains financially or otherwise. The number of unnatural jump cuts in Caught make me think director Max Ophuls has something similar in mind. At one point, Ohlrig comes to find Leonora in her new life. She tentatively agrees to go with him and then there's a jump cut to her waking up in bed in Ohlrig's house. There are no scenes to show any of Ohlrig's behaviour that result in her having sex with him or marrying him. We have no direct evidence that he coerced her, that she was genuinely attracted to him, or that she succumbed to his wishes due to a desire for his wealth. The absence of these key scenes, crucial for the film's nominal argument, raise my suspicions about our point of view character, Leonora. Are we seeing her edited memory?
To add fuel to this fire, we do know that Ohlrig suffers heart attacks when he doesn't get his way--in one case, Leonora admits wishing he would die. The film ends with an event truly remarkable for a film from 1949--Leonora and Quinada actually celebrating the fact that she miscarries the child she'd conceived with Ohlrig. Ohlrig had threatened to get sole custody of the child, something portrayed as a villainous act, and yet . . . Would the kid have really been better off with Leonora? And, hey, if we're talking about edited memories, can we be so sure it was a miscarriage?
Caught is available on The Criterion Channel until June 30.
Twitter Sonnet #1456
A figure turned and faced the empty board.
The figure changed as walls and curtains blurred.
The iron gate repelled the rusty sword.
Confounding truth was ever plain absurd.
Suspicious coats were carried back to Saks.
An easy heart destroyed the hardest man.
The money built a town in lofty stacks.
A house was built of wood and moistened sand.
The cooking sheet was rife with cookie crumbs.
We hid the bike to trick the passing boat.
A growing cake defeats the sickly sums.
A shrinking pie displays the number goat.
It's via steps the feet return to roost.
The dreamy brain confers to greed a boost.
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