This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

A melodrama? You bet. But isn't every day in prison a real melodrama. The plot is pretty simple, this is a movie about characters. I can't imagine actresses having more fun than what is offered here; even the smallest roles are so well defined. The scene with Marie's mother is painfully honest in explaining how these situations are not simple. In spite of the horror, there is a lot of good humor and kindness shown in these horrifyng situations. I can't believe that anyone could find a boring second in this beautifully acted, strongly directed, knowingly written and brilliantly photographed masterpiece. You might smile afterwards over how outrageous it is, but I bet no one smiles during. One of Hollywood's greatest that somehow is forgotten today.

I watched this on a whim because I like prison TV shows like Orange is the New Black and Wentworth. I wasn't really expecting much because I am aware of the Hays Code rules on movies and most of them requiring a "happy ending". However I was greatly surprised on the utter cynical nature of this movie. It was fantastic without being overtly political like OITNB or as violent as Wentworth. It told a beautiful and tragic story of a young woman beaten down by the system and how it is in fact the system that created a monster. If you like prison shows you should definitely give this a try. It is in black and white and 1950's lingo but it is still worth the watch.

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.

Kudos to TCM's 2015 "Summer of Darkness" for showing this seldom-viewed "film noir." For my money, it's the best "women in prison" film that's ever been made, far superior to the sexploitation films in this genre in recent decades. The beginning shot is a classic noir shot inside the paddy wagon taking the women, including the protagonist Marie Allen played by Eleanor Parker in an Oscar-nominated role, to the prison. We're looking out at the small wired screen at the back of the wagon and we get a sense of confinement, of being "caged", and then we hear the gruff command (see summary above) that starts the women's entry into the prison system. The film conveys a dark and gritty "social realism" that Warner Brothers seemed to specialize in at this time.While the prison is run by a progressive warden played by Agnes Morehead, the prisoners are cruelly harassed by a truly monstrous matron played by Hope Emerson, who also received an Oscar nomination. In this women's prison there are naive young women, CPs (common prostitutes), and hardened criminals who endeavor to instruct the younger ones in the ways of crime. There are hints of lesbianism, a staple for a prison film, but quite muted as expected for 1950. The truly marvelous thing to watch is Eleanor Parker's slow evolution from 19-year-old innocent to hardened aspiring criminal when she's released. The social message in "Caged" is that the prison system of 1950 was better at promoting recidivism than rehabilitation.