Caught **** (1949, James Mason, Barbara Bel Geddes, Robert Ryan) – Classic Movie Review 10,685

Director Max Ophüls’s 1949 black and white film noir romantic drama Caught stars James Mason, Robert Ryan and Barbara Bel Geddes.

Leonora Eames (Bel Geddes) marries neurotic Smith Ohlrig (Ryan) for his money, only to hanker after dedicated doctor Larry Quinada (Mason).

Of course the premise that money can’t buy happiness is simplistic and the plot is spectacularly trite, but esteemed German director Ophüls gift-wraps his psychological thriller with all the style in the world.

It established Mason in his first American movie as a sensitive new Hollywood leading man – it was advertised as ‘James Mason in his first American motion picture’ – and the young Bel Geddes is delightful, but the film belongs to the diabolically frightening Ryan. His character of Smith Ohlrig is based on Howard Hughes. Interesting, this, because in England, Mason had become popular playing the menacing bad guy: eg The Wicked Lady, The Seventh Veil, The Man in Grey and Fanny by Gaslight. He was to return to the archetypal character, memorably, in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest.

Arthur Laurents writes the screenplay, based on Libbie Block’s novel.

Also in the cast are Natalie Schafer [Natalie Schaefer], Curt Bois, Ruth Brady, Art Smith, Frank Ferguson, Sonia Darrin, Ilka Grüning, Jimmy Hawkins, Bernadene Hayes, Virginia Hunter, Pamela Mason, Frances Morris, Ann Morrison, and Vicki Raw Stiener.

It is made by Enterprise Productions at California Studios, 5530 Melrose Avenue, Hollywood, and released by MGM.

Max Oppenheimer adopted the pseudonym of Ophüls, the name of an aristocratic German family. He emigrated to France around 1933 and worked in the Netherlands and Italy for eight years. In 1941 he emigrated to the US, where he worked for 10 years before he went back to France in 1950.

Mason also stars in Ophüls’s The Reckless Moment (1949).

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,685

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