Caught

While both films star James Mason, Max Ophuls’ Caught is a much grander, more Gothic production than his other noir, The Reckless Moment, which was released the same year. Caught is a feminist’s worst nightmare: young Leonora Eames (Barbara Bel Geddes) dreams of marrying a rich man, so she attends charm school, marries a millionaire, feels disappointed in her marriage (which, again, she pursued strictly for money), leaves her husband, gets her first job, cries and quits when her male boss (James Mason) criticizes her performance, then forgives him by having sex with him. The film fascinates in its pre-feminist fantasies (after Leonora’s marriage, her mother raves to the newspaper, “I always knew my daughter would be a success.”), even if pacing and characterization problems exist.  Robert Ryan, who can do just about anything, plays Leonora’s husband Smith Ohlrig with the perfect blend of menace and vulnerability, playing pinball for stress relief and at times winning us over by acknowledging Leonora’s shallow mindset (“There’s still some charm school paint that needs chipping off”). Ophuls creates plenty of the pretty compositions he’s known for, notably when Leonora discovers a body in her cavernous parlor, an intimate dinner in a nightclub where the chairs appear to be thrones, a space-age ambulance interior with ominous trees flying past the window, and a compelling scene in which the camera pans slowly back and forth between Smith and his interlocutor from opposite sides of the room. Bel Geddes may not have had the star power to pull off the role perfectly, but she creates a nuanced, complex character that keeps us interested.