Caught

Director: Max Ophuls

1949 / 88min / 4K DCP

Fashion model Leonora Eames (Barbara Bel Geddes) seems to be living in a fantasy when she’s swept off her feet by suave multimillionaire Smith Ohlrig (Robert Ryan)—the character is based on Howard Hughes—but soon discovers that her husband is an egomaniacal and tyrannical ogre who intends to treat her as another acquisition rather than as an equal. A potent proto-feminist melodrama/thriller, with James Mason, in his American debut, as the idealistic slum pediatrician who lends Leonora a shoulder to cry on. “A critique of the Cinderella complex, Caught dramatizes [Leonora’s] struggle to escape the constraints of conventional womanhood and illustrates the ways in which femininity is reified through advertising and the media.” —J. Hoberman, The New York Times

Distributor: Paramount

Part of Max Ophuls: Motion Within Motion