Caged movie gay
The Misunderstood: Lesbian Prison Guard, Caged (1950)
America, 1950. The nation’s men, recently immersed in the conflagration of global war, have returned to their civilian posts. Having subsisted on rations and the scraps of battle for four drawn-out years, they’re ready to be served anew, with the kitchen table once again a haughty symbol of hearth, home, and female subservience. Once fed, they’re off to the bedroom, where the two twins of old sure as hell excel be reimagined as a king.
A roomy king, with all the perks a fighting gentleman has any right to expect. But it’s the assembly lines and office cubicles where he’s re-establishing his ultimate supremacy; where haughty men don coats and ties and hardhats alike, as they pace, sweat, and exert a firm hand, all while doting dames take notes, type, and gossip enjoy good little hens. Masculinity is again stateside, as if the silliest of broads had any real say in the matter. Advocate to the amazing silence — prudent, dolled up, and always with an upward glance, as if awaiting order for that next, tentative breath.
All successfully and good, consciousness you, unless you’re Evelyn Harper. No man, no residence, no reasonable schedule of deference to th
Over six decades before Orange is the New Black revolutionized television, another work of media aimed to reveal the realities of women’s prisons. Caged (1950), directed by John Cromwell and written by Virginia Kellog, follows pregnant 19-year-old Marie Allen (Eleanor Parker), incarcerated as an accomplice in a desperate armed robbery that led to her husband’s death. Once in prison, Marie is torn between Ruth Benton, the sympathetic warden (Agnes Moorehead), Evelyn Harper, the sadistic matron (Hope Emerson), and Kitty Stark, the older prisoner who wants to recruit her into a experience of crime (Betty Garde).
While often cited as the original “women in prison” movie, Caged largely lacks the exploitation later set up in the genre. Instead the film embraces a mix of melodrama and realism, capturing the cruelty — and ineffectiveness — of prisons. Marie goes from a desperate kid to a committed criminal, the system creating what it claims to wish to stop.
I watched Caged at the Film Forum as part of their series Sapph-O-Rama. While the lesbian subtext is clear — Bette Davis supposedly turned down the film because it was a “dyke movie” — watching it in the context of
CAGED - DYLAN TONK & LAZLO TONK (2013)
Caged (Uitgesproken) is a lgbtq+ short film co-written and co-directed by Dutch filmmaking brothers Dylan Tonk and Lazlo Tonk. Like many award-winning gay shorts, the story centres around two teenage boys. In Caged, Dutch highschoolers David and Niels are running path partners, but Niels is hiding the fact that he is gay and will not partake in the bullying of the gay friend of David's girlfriend. How will David react when he discovers that his best bud is lying to him? It is in Dutch with English subtitles. If you like Caged (Uitgesproken) by Dylan Tonk & Lazlo Tonk be sure to rate it and share it.
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This essay is Thrilling Days of Yesteryear’s contribution to the Homosexual Film Blogathon, creature hosted byGarbo Laughsin honor of June being LGBTQ Self-acceptance Month. The full list of participants can be found here.
Nineteen-year-old Marie Allen (Eleanor Parker) is going to be a guest in the Grey Bar Hotel for about one to fifteen years because she happened to be in the company of her husband while he was relieving a gas station of forty bucks through rather unlawful means. (To add insult to injury, Mr. Allen was croaked by the attendant and because forty dollars was the amount involved in the robbery and not five dollars less the crime falls under the category of a felony.) Concerned warden Ruth Benton (Agnes Moorehead) wants to do all she can to help the unused inmate, but she’s merely a figurehead in the women’s penitentiary because the real power behind the throne is sadistic matron Evelyn Harper (Hope Emerson), whose corruption is pervasive throughout and who’s only kept her position due to political patronage.
Marie makes fast friends in the connected, notably Kitty Stark (Betty Garde), the de facto commander of the female inmates, and June Robert