Lady in a Cage

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Movie
Original title Lady in a Cage
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1964
length 94 minutes
Rod
Director Walter Grauman
script Luther Davis
production Luther Davis for
Paramount Pictures
music Paul Glass
camera Lee Garmes
cut Leon Barsha
occupation

Lady in a Cage is an American psychological thriller with horror elements from 1964 . The main roles, directed by Walter Grauman , were played by Olivia de Havilland and, in his first substantial film role, James Caan .

action

Mrs. Cornelia Hilyard is a wealthy widow and hobby poet who broke her hip a few months ago and can only walk on crutches until she recovers. Cornelia bought a cage-like elevator so that she can move between the floors of her house without assistance. Their 30-year-old son Malcolm, who is obviously homosexual and is completely under the wing of his mother, also lives in the house. Ironically, when Malcolm was away for a summer weekend, the electricity in the house went out due to a mishap on a neighboring construction site. Cornelia remains helplessly stuck in her cage elevator, it has become a prison for her. She then presses an emergency button, which she can use to attract the attention of passers-by in front of her house. But only George, a homeless alcoholic and petty criminal, notices the alarm and looks in. He uses the opportunity and takes some small items with him. He ignores Cornelia's requests and her disparaging remarks to him. Instead, he goes to a seedy pawn shop, where he sells his stolen property.

At the pawn shop, George is noticed by three criminals with sociopathic behavior. The three young crooks - Randall, Elaine and Essie - follow him unnoticed. George and his girlfriend, the prostitute Sade, want to continue cleaning out Cornelia's house. But the three young people also have this intention; they are not only interested in the theft, but apparently enjoy the sadistic idea of ​​torturing Cornelia as well as George and Sade. When they arrive at the house, they first kill George and lock Sade in a toilet. The leader Randall then sets out to destroy Cornelia, who is still locked in the elevator, both physically and mentally. As a climax, Randall finds a note from Cornelia's son Malcolm, in which he thinks about a possible suicide because of his dominant mother. He shows the note to Cornelia, who is completely shocked.

With the last of her strength, Cornelia can assert herself against the much stronger Randall. She manages to free herself from the cage. She crawls out of the house, but is followed by Randall, who tries to drag her inside and kill her. In self-defense she stabs his eyes out. Randall gets disoriented on a street and is run over by a car. Meanwhile, the police appear, who can arrest Randall's accomplices after an unsuccessful attempt to escape and take care of the battered Cornelia. In the end, Cornelia cries uncontrollably, apparently not only because of her martyrdom, but also because she has recognized her wrongdoing towards her son.

background

Screenwriter and producer Luther Davis (1916-2008) wrote on July 5, 1964 in the Los Angeles Times that he was also inspired by a real incident for the film story: A friend of his was in 1959 during a power failure in New York in one Trapped in elevator. When she called for help, she was raped by two men.

Olivia de Havilland took over the main role from the intended Joan Crawford , who was prevented from doing so for reasons that were not known. With this film, De Havilland placed herself in line with her aging screen colleagues Joan Crawford and Bette Davis , who, after their great success in the 1930s and 1940s, also appeared in horror films such as What Really Happened to Baby Jane? had evaded. Only a few months later, De Havilland replaced Crawford again: in the role of Miriam Deering in the psychological thriller Lullaby for a Corpse , which also falls into the same genre as Lady in a Cage . De Havilland is said to have been in a romantic relationship with Luther Davis in the mid-1960s.

For James Caan , who was still largely unknown at the time , the villain role in Lady in a Cage was the first major film role. According to his own admission, he wanted his portrayal of Randall Simpson O'Connell to be based on Marlon Brando's appearance in Endstation Sehnsucht . For the experienced television director Walter Grauman , Lady in a Cage was his first feature film.

reception

Lady in a Cage was profitable at the box office, received largely negative reviews when it was released, and sparked a minor scandal. AH Weiler of the New York Times admitted tension to the film, but criticized the "aimless brutality", an often illogical script and the strong cynicism of the film. His New York Times colleague Bosley Crowther went a step further and criticized Lady in a Cage as a "reprehensible film", which is irresponsible from a social point of view due to its portrayal of an anarchist youth. Columnist Hedda Hopper demanded that the film's negatives be burned. Another reviewer commented on the leading actress de Havilland, who had never appeared in such brutal films before: "Count Olivia the kind of actresses who would rather be fools than be forgotten." In the UK, Lady in a Cage was allowed to do so Representations of violence were not even shown in the cinema until 1967.

In the recent past, however, there have also been positive reviews of the film. Dawn Keetley wrote that the film was exceptional in its depictions of violence and the incessantly dark, nihilistic narrative tone in the early 1960s. He already points to later "squatter" films such as Wes Cravens The Last House on the Left and Michael Haneke's Funny Games .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ellis Amburn: Olivia de Havilland and the Golden Age of Hollywood . Rowman & Littlefield, 2018, ISBN 978-1-4930-3410-9 ( google.de [accessed April 29, 2020]).
  2. ↑ Lady in a Cage (1964) - IMDb. Retrieved April 29, 2020 .
  3. ^ Review in the New York Times by AH Weiler
  4. ↑ socially Hurtful; 'Lady in a Cage' Is a Reprehensible Film . In: The New York Times . June 21, 1964, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed April 29, 2020]).
  5. ↑ The Cinemascope Cat: The CinemaScope Cat: Lady In A Cage (1964). In: The CinemaScope Cat. December 1, 2019, accessed April 29, 2020 .
  6. ↑ IMDb Trivia
  7. ↑ Lady in a Cage: Early, Devastating Home Invasion Film | Horror movie. March 22, 2020, accessed April 29, 2020 (American English).