Leonora Eames is a small town girl in Los Angeles looking for love who bags millionaire Smith Ohlrig as a husband. However, she is unhappy, Ohlrig is a cold-hearted possessive creep and when she meets the philanthropic Dr Quinada her thoughts start to stray ...
Caught is a movie for film buffs. Whilst the plot is serviceable, it's not really believable in any sense - millionaire marries girl he hardly knows purely to annoy his analyst - and Leonora is similarly far-fetched. She's constantly trying to prove herself worthy and not a gold-digger, but if so why does she marry Smith ? And while Bel Geddes does the best she can, she's caught (sorry) between these two sides of her character, and so suffers in comparison with the femme fatales and Woman's Film stars of the time. Where the movie really scores however is in its look, which is a masterclass in evocative and intriguing photography. Ophuls was a master with the camera, as was director of photography Lee Garmes (Scarface, Duel In The Sun), and so much of the film is an exercise in cool style - the camera follows the actors through offices and bars where anyone else would cut, past daring fake walls, drifting sideways to focus on a particular element of the set, even at one point using a crane at ground level to pull back over Ryan's body when he collapses. If you're interested, the origins of Kubrick, Polanski and Spielberg's visual styles are all in this picture. There's also a great teeth-grinding psycho performance from Ryan as the slimeball (allegedly a hatchet job on Howard Hughes), and note Bois as the lackey who finally has his moment. Bois played in German films for years then fled the Nazis (like Ophuls), made forty movies in Hollywood (he plays the pickpocket in Casablanca) and returned to Germany for a very successful TV career. Based on the book Wild Calendar by Libbie Block.
Caught is a movie for film buffs. Whilst the plot is serviceable, it's not really believable in any sense - millionaire marries girl he hardly knows purely to annoy his analyst - and Leonora is similarly far-fetched. She's constantly trying to prove herself worthy and not a gold-digger, but if so why does she marry Smith ? And while Bel Geddes does the best she can, she's caught (sorry) between these two sides of her character, and so suffers in comparison with the femme fatales and Woman's Film stars of the time. Where the movie really scores however is in its look, which is a masterclass in evocative and intriguing photography. Ophuls was a master with the camera, as was director of photography Lee Garmes (Scarface, Duel In The Sun), and so much of the film is an exercise in cool style - the camera follows the actors through offices and bars where anyone else would cut, past daring fake walls, drifting sideways to focus on a particular element of the set, even at one point using a crane at ground level to pull back over Ryan's body when he collapses. If you're interested, the origins of Kubrick, Polanski and Spielberg's visual styles are all in this picture. There's also a great teeth-grinding psycho performance from Ryan as the slimeball (allegedly a hatchet job on Howard Hughes), and note Bois as the lackey who finally has his moment. Bois played in German films for years then fled the Nazis (like Ophuls), made forty movies in Hollywood (he plays the pickpocket in Casablanca) and returned to Germany for a very successful TV career. Based on the book Wild Calendar by Libbie Block.