Very Cool!!!

Sorry, this movie sucks

One of the worst movies I've ever seen

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

Max Ophuls brings a melodrama of a relationship gone awry. Caught has a film noir sensibilities as Robert Ryan plays multi millionaire industrialist Smith Ohlrig a man very much inspired by Howard Hughes, a cruel narcissist.Barbara Bel Geddes is Leonara, a department store model who attends charm school with dreams of finding a rich husband and gets invited to a party at a yacht by Franzi, a camp party organiser who searches for hostesses for Ohlrig's parties. Here she strikes up with Smith as she waits to get on the yacht and he eventually marries her mainly to spite his therapist.Once married she finds herself alone with Franzi as company and Ohlrig is increasingly cruel to her, embarrassing and humiliating her and having petty rages so much so that Leonara leaves him and starts to work in a poor area of New York as a Doctor's receptionist where she finds solace from James Mason's Dr Quinada.Max Ophuls brings a European sensibility to this threesome but you get the feeling that this is a restrained film because of the censorship laws of the period. You never see the full on cruelty of Ohlrig but Robert Ryan plays him with various light and shade suggesting that this is a tycoon who is not two dimensional and Ryan puts on a domineering performance.Bel Geddes does well as she shows Leonara's vulnerabilities but never strikes me as a beauty to entice a man such as Ohlrig. James Mason in his Hollywood debut plays Quinada with sharpness and bite. He is not the upright nice guy who falls in love with Leonara that other director's would had gone for. At first we see him as rather fractious but he and Leonara then fall for each other and it does not take him long to gauge Ohlrig and what ticks his boxes.The film's ending looks rushed, although Ohlrig's cruelty is there to see by the end you get the feeling the film was ahead of its time but suffers from the pulled punches.

Moody drama with fantastic acting. All three leads offer strong performances. Robert Ryan, arguably the best projector of menace to ever appear on screen here plays an even more odious character than usual. James Mason, no stranger to menace himself, handling the upright fellow this time and being very dashing about it. Interesting to see Barbara Bel Geddes this early in her career and playing a character so different from her famous Miss Ellie. Well directed with heavy use of shadows really making even the large rooms of the mansion feel closed in and oppressive. Watch closely towards the beginning and you will see Barbara Billingsley as a customer in the department store.

Director Max Ophüls ( Letter From An Unknown Woman 1948, The Reckless Moment 1949) offers a gritty and volatile film noir starring James Mason, Barbara Bel Geddes and the imposing figure of Robert Ryan. With an uncredited assistant directorship by Robert Aldrich. Based on the book Wild Calendar by Libbie BlockWritten by Arthur Laurents (The Snake Pit 1948,West Side Story 1961, The Way We Were 1973)Interesting question: If Howard Hughes gained control of RKO in 1949, was Robert Ryan's characterization of Smith Ohlrig truly based on Hughs?Also stars Frank Ferguson (regular on Andy Griffith Show) as Quinada's partner Dr. Hoffman, Art Smith as Ohlrig's psychiatrist who knows Ohlrig is a walking powder keg, Natalie Schafer as Dorothy Dale and Curt Bois as Ohlrig's personal assistant, and like many a good Film Noir delivers, the snarky gay cipher – Franzi Kartos, who's incessantly calling Leonora DARLING… that if subtitled would read 'you bourgeois cow…'One of the staples of the Noir catalog, Caught is a brutish and self contained story about an egomaniac, hungry for power and consumed by a nasty possessiveness that borders on the psychotic.Robert Ryan is chilling as the Neanderthal bigwig worth millions of dollars, with an explosive rage that rests on simmer until something sets him off when it doesn't go his way. Oh, and Ohlrig also suffers from panic attacks, which he believes is truly a heart condition and not a nervous disorder.Barbara Bel Geddes is the naive Leonora Eames, who has child like fancies of marrying a wealthy man and live a life of luxury. Invited to a party on a boat one night, she meets Smith Ohlrig outside on the pier, near his yacht. Although Ohlrig could have any woman he chooses, something about Leonora sparks to him. From the very first encounter we can see that it's not a romantic chemistry that stirs Ohlrig, but something more forbidding and sinister.Once he sets his sights on her,taking her for a ride in his car, he decides there and then, to marry this plain girl, whom he doesn't love, but knows he can possess easily.Leonora soon realizes that her dream has become a nightmare and that Smith is a menacing character who treats her like part of the furniture and is not quite right in the head.Ohlrig refuses to give Leonora a divorce, so she decides to leave her opulent home on Long Island, and take a job as a receptionist in the city working for a doctor who runs a free clinic in a very poor neighborhood.Perhaps this is Leonora's way of cleansing her soul for making the mistake of marrying for money and not for love.James Mason is Dr. Larry Quinada the absolute antithesis of Smith Ohlrig. He's genteel and compassionate, and soon the two fall in love, though Leonora is held captive by her dominating husband.Complicating matters is the fact that Leonora becomes pregnant by the sadistic Ohlrig who would rather see her a prisoner in the sterile palace that is her home rather than let her go free… Is the threat of financial security and the welfare of their unborn child that which will chain her to him forever…?

When I first watched this movie about 20 or so years ago, it was the first time I'd seen Ms. Barbara Bel Geddes in something other than the TV show "Dallas". As such, I remember being quite impressed not only by her young beauty but also how different this character-a model named Leonora Eames trying to snag a rich man-was from Miss Ellie. In fact, part of me thinks maybe J.R. Ewing himself would not take kindly to the way this Smith Ohlrig (Robert Ryan) treats his Mama here! So because Leonora finds her pampered existence stifling, she ups and leaves Smith-with his initial blessing-to go work for a Dr. Larry Quinada (James Mason) in the poor side of Manhattan as a receptionist. Ryan and Mason are good enough in their well-defined roles but Ms. Bel Geddes truly amazes with her stretching her acting talents with the range of emotions she displayed here. No wonder Larry Hagman finally agreed to join "Dallas" when he found out she would play his mom on that now-legendary show! So on that note, I highly recommend Caught mainly on the strength of Ms. Bel Geddes performance alone.