Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Original Screenplay 1950

The Contenders:

Adam’s Rib
Caged
The Men
No Way Out
Sunset Boulevard (winner)

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actress 1950

The Contenders:
Anne Baxter: All About Eve
Bette Davis: All About Eve
Judy Holliday: Born Yesterday (winner)
Eleanor Parker: Caged
Gloria Swanson: Sunset Boulevard

Caged

Format: DVD from Mokena Community Public Library through interlibrary loan on laptop.

Ah, the women’s prison movie. Typically, these films are on the bottom end of the class spectrum and feature gratuitous nudity and violence—watch Machete Maidens Unleashed! for a nice round up of at least part of the genre. In the case of Caged, though, what we have is something more along the lines of an exposé about women’s prisons. In that sense, it’s like The Snake Pit or I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang. There’s no gratuitous sexiness here, no lingering shower scenes or forced lesbian romps with the prison guards. No, Caged is meant to be sobering.

Marie Allen (Eleanor Parker) is 19, pregnant, a widow, and headed to prison as an accessory in the botched robbery that killed her husband. Poor Marie is painfully naïve and as innocent as a newborn lamb. She’s completely unprepared for the reality of prison, and in fact is unprepared for her own pregnancy. A kindly superintendent named Ruth Benton (Agnes Moorehead) is sympathetic to Marie’s plight and promises her a job working in the prison laundry, since that will be physically easier. Sadly for her, Marie is placed in the ward belonging to prison matron Evelyn Harper (Hope Emerson), who is both on the take from the wealthier prisoners and a sadist.