Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Basil Dearden
Starring: David Farrar, Jean Simmons, James Donald, Madeleine Lebeau, Herbert Lom
1950's Cage of Gold is one of those mid-century British dramas in which women were
always losing their mind over David Farrar (see
also Black Narcissus and The Small Back Room). In this one it's Jean Simmons who falls under
Farrar's spell, getting herself in a right spot of bother in the
process.
Simmons plays Judith, a young artist who takes the London underground and
bumps into Farrar's Bill (Michael Powell had similarly pressed his heroine
against Farrar's chest in a crowded subway carriage in the previous
year's The Small Back Room). During the war Judith was in love with Bill (like Raiders of the Lost Ark, it's best not to do the maths regarding the ages here) but he went off
to become a Wing Commander in the RAF. Bill begins romancing Judith, much
to the chagrin of her lover, nice but dull doctor Alan (James Donald), who eventually loses out as Judith becomes pregnant and agrees to
marry Bill.
What Judith doesn't realise is that Bill is a proper bounder who has been
earning a living through smuggling and various other criminal scams since
the end of the war. Far from ideal husband and father material, Bill has a
secret life in Paris, where he's doted over by two other women - nightclub
singer Marie (Madeleine Lebeau) and young society girl Antoinette (Maria Mauban).
The ensuing plot sees Judith and Alan caught up in Bill's dastardly
scheme, which involves his false demise, blackmail and eventually
violence. Basil Dearden's film eventually reveals itself as
a noirish mystery, but for the most part it's a romantic melodrama,
albeit one that we know is headed towards heartbreak.
Simmons plays the beautiful shrew in sympathetic fashion, which makes
Bill's manipulations seem all the more dastardly. Farrar is a livewire
as the enigmatic but awful Bill, and he seems to be relishing the
opportunity to play such an outright cad. The under-rated Dearden's
staging is immaculate, often using his sets in expressionist fashion to
convey his characters' emotional states. When Judith receives a
heartbreaking letter, Dearden makes the choice not to focus on Simmons'
face as she reads its words, but instead for the camera to retreat as
though aware it's intruding on a tender moment, eventually leaving
Judith an isolated figure in a room that suddenly seems awfully big.
There's a similar moment where Marie is left alone on a nightclub stage,
which is revealed by a retreating camera as the titular golden cage. The
emotionally heated finale sees Dearden and cinematographer Douglas Slocombe (who would go on to lens the aforementioned Raiders of the Lost Ark) make great use of the London fog, and a sequence involving a boiling
kettle and a drawn pistol wouldn't be out of place in an early Hitchcock
thriller (it may well have influenced Tarantino for the pop tarts scene
in Pulp Fiction).
What sets Cage of Gold back is how it squanders the potential of its mystery plot, which
it only really dives into in the final act. Jack Whittingham's script does a fine job of establishing the core players but the
mystery is wrapped up far too promptly and neatly to generate the
expected late suspense. A silver melodrama then, but a bronze
thriller.
Cage of Gold is on UK/ROI
VOD/DVD/bluray from September 16th.