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Cape Fear: Thoughts

posted 12 years ago by telegonus
14 replies | jump to latest

I saw Cape Fear tonight and throughly enjoyed it, caught the last half first, then they reran it, so I got the whole thing. In any event, I've seen it before. It was amazingly effective, brutal, as much psychologically as physically, expertly directed by the underrated and sadly neglected J. Lee Thompson. If I were to rate it I'd give it an 8 or 9 out of ten.

It's often been called Hitchcockian, and indeed it's suspense thriller in the Hitchcock vein but far more violent than most of Hitchcock's pictures, and not nearly so polished. There is a gloss to it, though, due mostly to Sam Leavitt's excellent, somewhat lush photography. Fine as it is, it falls short of greatness for me. I'd call it way above average. There are some good comments on it on this board, many comparing the 1962 original to the 1991 remake, which I haven't seen; and there's a lot of comparing of the performances of the various actors in these films. My reason for posting here is to point out why and where I think Cape Fear falls short:

i): Many of the dramatic scenes feel rushed, not sped up but designed to further the story to the extent that we never really get to know any of the major characters well,--aside from, ironically, the villain, Max Cady--everyone else is somewhat two dimensional. One mark of a great film, a classic, is that it works on many levels. Many great dramatic films contain much humor; while a lot of classic adventure pictures actually flesh out their characters even as they're getting into action, going into battle, and so forth. Cape Fear's screenplay is professional enough, however in terms of characterization it's somewhat at the B level, yet it's clearly an A.

ii): Casting: for a film from 1962 set in the American South it strikes me as odd that there are scarcely any Southern players in the movie. Robert Mitchum is the most authentic sounding as Max Cady, while Martin Balsam, Telly Savalas and Jack Kruschen, who all try hard, come off as New York actors playing Southerners. As it so happens there were a lot of Southern or Southwestern actors in Hollywood in those days, as well as many actors expert at playing country types. Nearly all the actors in the movie feel "city" to me, and Yankee city at that. This hurts it in the "authenticity department" despite a good deal of location shooting in the real South (Georgia, I believe).

iii:) To continue along a similar line, it's almost as if director Lee Thompson and/or co-producer Gregory Peck and maybe also the executives at Universal decided to go for a suburban approach, thus lawyer Gregory Peck and his family are an ordinary middle class All-American family that just happens to be Southern, yet as I see it, what an opportunity was missed to have added some local color and local flavor to the proceedings! Cape Fear could have had Southern atmosphere to spare had it gone that route, which would have ramped up the suspense. There's little attempt to create a genuinely Southern ambiance, and often Gregory Peck is shown wearing a sweater or a windbreaker, thus in its details the movie could just as well be taking place in Michigan or Pennsylvania.

iv:) The later scenes, the more suspenseful and violent ones on the boat and nearby, while tense and well directed from a suspense standpoint, are somewhat confusing as to what's going on. Given how meticulously the movie was made, how neatly everything was put together, set up, so to speak, it ends with, so far as I can tell, a certain disjointedness, and some illogicality to as motivation. Apparently the Polly Bergen character of the wife and mother wasn't actually raped, but it's difficult to know for sure. The daughter wasn't, yet Cady's abduction of her makes no sense: once he has her in his grip he drags her off the boat and onto dry land, yet the suspense ratcheted up at this point was all based on Cady's wanting to get his revenge on the man whose testimony sent him to prison for eight years, and the best way to do this, by his lights, would be to rape and brutalize the man's daughter. Essentially the movie had been building up to this early on, even as things weren't stated so explicitly, as they couldn't be in 1962; however this was, never the less, pretty clear.

Cady was after the girl, the daughter, and he could have done the nasty right there, on the boat, but he didn't. Why? Well, in going on shore he would be confronting the girl's very angry father, which would in turn lead to the inevitable fight to the finish, as indeed it did, and while these scenes are reasonably well staged there's something unsatisfying about this turn of events in the film. I'm not remotely suggesting that the movie would be better if he did rape the daughter, no one in his right mind would want that, however much of the tension in the film up till these late scenes came from the basic obscenity behind Cady's plans, the man's diabolical scheme to get back at a man who did him no more harm than appear as a witness in a criminal trial to a crime of which he was in fact guilty! So where's the beef? To Cady, that was the beef, and the logic of his actions was in his mind only, which reflected his psychopathic personality. So far as I can tell Cady's taking the girl off the boat was written into the script so as to give the father a chance to confront him. This didn't work for me. I thought it was way too conveniently handled. More thought and preparation should have gone into how the film ended.

Okay, on the plus side, the very plus side of the movie and the script: first, Cady, while presented as an evil man, also possesses wit and charm. Bad as he is he's a far more interesting character than the rather average fellow he's going after. This is all to the good, as it creates in Cady a villain who's also a kind of anti-protagonist. While at no point in the movie is any reasonable viewer rooting for Cady to succeed, there's something perversely admirable in the man's mastery of the law, his cunning, his persistance. He knows what he wants and he goes after it, while the virtuous lawyer is much of the time at a loss as to what to do about it.

Another big plus, and I only noticed this on the second viewing, is that nasty as Cady is, he doesn't formally begin his assault on the lawyer till after the lawyer and the police have made life hell for him on trumped up vagrancy charges and the like. He is put upon, essentially persecuted, hounded, as the modestly well to do lawyer and his pals in law enforcement seek to ride him out of town. This is made clear. It's only after this has been established that Cady poisons the family dog, stalks the daughter in her school, beats up the woman he picks up at a bar. There's a touch of ambiguity here, for while there's no doubt that Max Cady has it in for the lawyer, he doesn't swing into action aggressively till after the lawyer makes his first move, and one can see how this would in his mind justify his actions. In a strange and subtle way the movie plays fair with Cady. He's an ex-con, down on his luck, with about five grand in the bank. The (relatively) affluent lawyer and his friends do provoke him, and Cady gets himself a lawyer to prove this, and his lawyer does a good job of it. There's a well written scene in which Cady's lawyer makes a credible case against the good guys!

There's no doubt in the movie as to who's the good guy and who's the bad guy, yet it does balance the story in such a way as to permit the viewer to see the bad guy's point of view, where he's coming from, and to show that the hero of the tale isn't above hiring a gang of thugs to beat Cady up (not that he wasn't asking for it). With a better thought out script, a more logically worked out ending, Cape Fear might have been a classic, a masterpiece of its genre. As it is, it's outstanding; a near miss, and not by all that much. The casting of Robert Mitchum as Max Cady puts it over. Gregory Peck is a brick as the hero/victim of the piece, but it's when Mitchum as Cady turns up that the movie really starts to hum.

[–] hobnob53 12 years ago

As usual, many interesting observations, telegonus. A few thoughts if I may join in....

I'm not sure I agree with you that most of the characters, aside from Cady, are two-dimensional. In fact, one could argue that Cady was the most 2-D character in the film. He's brilliantly realized by Mitchum, but as a character, Cady is basically psychotic and violent -- period. He has no redeeming qualities. You express admiration for the way the script shows his cunning and so on, but I don't think this fleshes out his character very much. He's a psychopath, a rapist, a bully and, ultimately, murderer, for none of which is he the slightest bit repentant. But in terms of getting into what makes him tick, we get little information. Hints, yes, but they all point back to his underlying psychoses and predilection towards violence -- always directed against those weaker than him.

You also think the script brings out the "underdog" in Cady (as you said on another thread) and that he's somehow the put-upon one in that he doesn't do anything until he's first been harassed. But here again I disagree. True, technically Cady didn't begin his assaults until after Sam had first gone to the police, but you seem to give him too much sympathy, as though he were the injured party. Cady planned to do what he did all along. He wasn't driven to it, didn't make it more severe, because of anyone else's harassment. I think the script depicts Sam's attempts to use such a "preemptive strike" to stave off Cady as yet another example of Bowden's effort to get rid of him through legal, non-violent means -- the first step in a series of gradually less legal, more violent efforts he utilizes to protect his family. Don't read too much into this: the script in no wise makes Cady any sort of victim.

The other characters are rather simply drawn, true, but they are what they're supposed to be: nice, normal, middle-class people. We don't get into their personal neuroses (as we do with the 1991 version, which I know you haven't seen), but then we really don't have to, and the family is drawn reasonably realistically, especially for the time. So are the supporting characters.

Though you haven't seen it, one of the key aspects of the 1991 film is that the Bowden family is completely dysfunctional: the couple's marriage is coming apart, Sam has cheated with a girl (who's later assaulted by Cady), they have an alientated, nitwit daughter who's attracted to Cady, and Bowden hadn't been a witness against Cady at his trial years before -- he'd been Cady's own attorney, and had deliberately tanked the case because he felt Cady belonged in jail. That last bit was the one revamp of the original concept that really worked as a motive for Cady's revenge. At the time, many critics felt that Scorsese had made the family more "realistic" (or more "contemporary") by making them such jerks. But what's wrong with nice, normal and average? Not every family unit has to be nasty and stupid. The 1991 characterizations may have been more complex, but not necessarily better.

As to the climax of this film (1962), I think it came off all right and wasn't confusing, though I do see your point: it might have been executed a bit more cleanly and clearly. But Cady didn't drag the girl to the house -- she was put there by her father beforehand. Cady found her there and confronted her, trying to rape her. But overall I think Sam could have handled this part of his plan much better...as could the writer and director. Still, it all works reasonably well.

You make an interesting point about none of the actors being southern, and the lack of any real southern ambiance in the picture. Here again, I agree with you to an extent. But I think the film wanted to make the Bowden family as accessible as possible to general audiences. To have concentrated too much on the movie's "southernness" would have served as a distraction and would also have blunted the notion that this could happen to anybody anywhere. As it stands, the audience is involved with the Bowdens from the start because they are "just like them", in the sense that they're not overtly from one state or region. Had they been made an obvious southern couple, and the film brought in lots of southern color and flavor, it would have become something of a "period piece", in the sense that it would have been looked upon by most audiences (outside the South) as something happening there, from which they could be safely detached. In my view, this would have harmed the ability of people to become involved with the plot of this particular film. There are movies in which such a regional identification is useful or even necessary, but not this one. Anyway, we all know it's in the South, so no need to hammer it home.

Remember also that this was 1962. The South was the focus of violent racial turmoil as the civil rights era was getting heavily underway. There was enough real violence -- murders, lynchings, bombings, police brutality -- occurring in that region at that time to make even a Max Cady seem a mild and unimportant distraction. None of this reflected well on the South, and deservedly so. But to have imbued the film with too much such "atmosphere" would have raised the issue of what else, much worse, was going on in the same place at the same time. As it is, one thing that strikes me about the film is the very absence of any reference, or even inference, to the racial issues that were every day matters to all southerners. There's not even a hint of segregated facilities anywhere in the film. To have brought the true flavor -- or color, in every sense of the word -- of the contemporary South into this film would have necessitated bringing in lots of difficult and unpleasant facts that would have distracted the audience and lessened the menace posed by Cady.

[–] telegonus 12 years ago

By all means, Hobnob, feel free to jump in. I was hoping to get a discussion going about Cape Fear.

Well, as to two versus three dimensionality in commercial movie characters, I think the differences pale when one compares them to characters in serious works of fiction and drama. Movies have all kinds of restraints and constraints placed on them, plus there's the time factor, and in the case of a film like Cape Fear, the fact that it was essentially a melodrama made story development more important than character development.

That aside, it could Robert Mitchum's near empathetic playing of Max Cady (as to his seeming innate understanding of his motivations) that puts Cady over for me. I don't think I've ever seen Mitchum use his face so well in a movie. Usually, he was impassive. In Cape Fear he's quite animated. He lets us know what the character is thinking and feeling. The other actors are competent; Mitchum is sublime. Cady strikes me as a well developed character due to the amount of screen time he's given and the way he plots against Bowden. Yes, we see various aspects of Bowden the good family man, the faithful husband and loving father, but those are "generic movie qualities", nicely done, they don't tell us much about the man except that he's a good guy.

Unfortunately I don't have the time right now to go into greater detail but my second viewing of Cape Fear the other night was fasinating as to how Cady's evil unfolds. It's almost as if,--and this may be my imagination--he could have been stopped, might have simmered down, if people had treated him differently. Admittedly, he behaved so badly he got the treatment he deserved and yet it's emphasized in, for instance, the car scene in which he's driving with the girl he picked up in a bar that she regards him as trash, as she even calls him "rock bottom". She's clearly thrilled over the prospect of spending the night with such a man but in designating him as near sub-human she brought out more of the beast in him than she bargained for. But what if she'd taken a shine to him in a different way? We'll never know, but if Cady had a "good side" her speaking to him the way she did was guaranteed to not bring it out.

I'm not trying to make Cady out as a potential saint, and as I'm at the time reading a book on the Devil, literally, a study of Satan through religion and history, I'm struck by Satan the "shadow God" and "Satan as test of man's goodness". Max Cady was surely diabolical in Cape Fear, but he was a human being for all that, and one could read the film as a study of evil treated as evil, as no one really tries to handle him as anything but the trash he comes off as, thus evil, in human form, does its dirty work as planned. Okay: it's "only a movie", and I may be reading too much inti it, but I'm intrigued by the human aspect of the story, especially, as we can see, Sam Bowden, while a far better man than Cady, isn't all good, and the law is only too eager to harrass Cady for being a "vagrant".

[–] hobnob53 12 years ago

Thanks, telegonus, this is a good discussion.

I agree with most of what you say. You're right in that the movie stresses story over character development, and as you say, this is not untypical of filmed melodrama. Even so, I think the film does a good enough job with its characterizations. Perhaps it's just that the characters aren't supposed to be too complex, or that we learn everything about them it's necessary for us to know. Still, I've always felt that I got to know and understand them all. They may seem superficially undeveloped, but I think there's more there.

You make a really good point about something that never occurred to me: namely, Mitchum's use of facial expressions. You're absolutely right, I don't recall ever seeing him use his face so animatedly, which was not his style. Interestingly, in thinking about this it occurs to me that the other best example of his doing so is in his other "psycho" movie, The Night of the Hunter. He employs a variety of subtle -- and some not so subtle -- facial expressions in that one too. Both roles have broad similarities -- it was his performance in the 1955 film that led Peck to hire him for this one -- and Mitchum obviously relished both parts. He probably sensed that such a role required a more overtly expressive characterization (both physically as well as emotively) to help nail each character's psychotic, driven nature, and acted accordingly. Whatever the case, Mitchum's expressive use of his face is indeed a key element in making Max Cady so menacing, and yet, beguiling in a curious way. You can't look away from him when he's on screen, and that's one of the reasons. Good catch!

I also never understood why the "little drifter" (as Bowden calls her), Diane (Barrie Chase), just keeps making those negative remarks to Cady. Obviously she's trying to excite herself by saying such things, in hopes of making their sex even better by heightening the risks and tensions, but you'd think even she would have enough sense to realize she's dealing with an unstable, violent man. But you hear a lot of such real-life stories, so I suppose it's credible. But the audience is probably groaning, wanting to yell at her, "Stop it, you twit!"

All of which leads to your other, most interesting, point, about how Cady might have evolved had he been treated with civility and kindness. We can infer that he probably grew up with little of either, and his consequent behavior is plainly fueled by his growing resentment at being shunned and demeaned by "normal" society. So, if Diane had treated him respectfully, might he not have assaulted her? If Bowden had invited Cady for a drink, even dinner, at the very outset, might he have disarmed him?

To both questions...maybe. But it's a very shaky maybe. The damage had long since been done to Cady. His violent nature was not simply due to being considered "trash" and the like all his life, but stemmed from his innate personality. You don't just become violent without some inner predisposition towards it. Granted, this preexisting condition can then easily be exacerbated and inflamed by people's rejection or demeaning of the person. But even had Cady been brought up to respect the civilities of normal society (and we don't know that he wasn't: aside from the reason he went to jail, we never learn anything about his past beyond his marriage and its outcome), his underlying psychosis wouldn't need much to explode into violent action against others, and he was clearly a person out of control, barely containing himself only when it was absolutely necessary.

Had Diane been nice to him, at best he might have lost interest in her -- he wanted to dominate and abuse someone, as much as she wanted to be dominated by a "low-life" -- and thrown her out. Or he might have had sex with her, then become violent out of resentment of her being nice -- something he neither wanted nor expected. Same with Sam. Had Bowden thought to try to disarm Cady by being friendly toward him, at best it might have taken some of the fire out of Cady, cost him some of the momentum of hatred that was building inside him, made him think a bit. But I doubt it would have changed much in the end. The hate had been simmering too long, and remember that Cady was in denial about the crime he'd committed that got him sent away in the first place. The resentment about being in prison, and Sam's role in putting him there, would remain.

Cady was a psychotic. His behavior furthered people's rejection of him. He couldn't accept that or control himself. People's reactions to him may have added fuel to the fire, so it may be something of a vicious circle, but in the end Cady was not someone to take responsibility for his actions. He was a sociopath, and no amount of kindness would change anything as basic as his personality. On occasion, it might affect bits of his behavior for the better, but it wouldn't change the underlying tendency toward hatred and violence that was normal for him.

Cady himself may not have been "evil" -- I don't know that any human being can be regarded as "evil" in itself -- but his thoughts and deeds were evil. For these he had no remorse, and evinced no desire to change. He wanted things his way, and if others got in the way, he'd deal with them to make sure they'd never stand up to him again.

Oh, one last thing: in telling Bowden about his post-prison "escapade" with his ex-wife, Cady mentions that his children didn't even know him, and asks Bowden something to the effect of, "You didn't even know I had a family, did you, counselor?" I always got a sense from this exchange that there was indeed something lurking deep inside Cady that wanted a "normal" life, wife and kids, and that he even had it for a while. You see a glimmer of longing for his kids, at least, and maybe even for his wife. I always got an inference that Cady might not have been a bad (as in abusive) husband or father. Yet while married he committed the assualt that landed him in jail, so we know that, at the least, a wife and children and a home didn't have a restraining effect on him. Sooner or later his true nature would emerge, which means it would likely have come out against his family at some point...if indeed it hadn't already, even before he went to prison. But it's an aspect of his background I'd have liked to learn more about.

[–] telegonus 12 years ago

A much appreciated response, Hobnob. Once more, strapped for time, I'll try to get back to you later on some of the finer points you made.

I've dealt with my share of sociopaths in my life, none in Cady's league but a fair number; some nasty pieces of work, outwardly respectable, with bonhomie to spare, inwardly mean, misanthropic; charming bullies, glib would-be philosophers, people who rated themselves so high above others as to be obscene, by which I mean no one's that good or that smart, and even when good and smart if these qualities are not balanced by an innate humanity, the humble realization of self as merely one of many out of millions, billions are, who walk the face of the earth on two legs, possess the usual flaws we all have, what good are they? They're just machines of pure ego even as their innate sadism, more psychological than physical, is so unplugged and unregulated as to make them destructive forces morally even as they charm, cajole, buy drinks and meals for others, essentially buy people off so as to control them. Cady is an extreme version of this type, and it's a type I recognize all too well, which is one of the reasons I found Cape Fear so fascinating.

Most characters of this sort cannot be "cured", as they don't regard themselves as particularly "wrong". Usually, they see themselves as in some way "ahead of the curve", so superior to others, in their rightness of judgment and actions, as to sarcely need change of improvement. It's others who need to change, to recognize them as the superior people they are. Max Cady is more down dirty than that. When I've had to deal with his kind for any long period I've found that I have about a 50/50 chance of being able to negotiate a reasonable relationship with them, whether in work, family, as neighbor, whatever capacity. Most of them cannot be changed unless they want to be but I've found that at least half the time their behavior can be modified. How? By treating them well, responding with sympathy and respect, drawing out the best in them,--and they all do have their "good sides"--in such a way as to not become a target of their basically nasty personalities, so contemptuous of others. In other words, I've found that I can become a member of their exclusive "club" if I behavior in a manner they approve of.

While watching Cape Fear the second time around I couldn't help but wonder how Max Cady would have responded to Sam Bowden if Bowden had offered to help him, extended a friendly hand,--this sounds crazy, I know--admitted that, whatever happened in Baltimore in the long run he had played a role in making Cady's life hell and that he was willing, as a good citizen, to try to help him get it back together if Cady would listen to what he had to offer. Crazy, you say? Not reallly. Cady had set himself up as a kind of Abraham from Hell, with Bowden the Isaac he was planning to sacrfiice in his dark scheme of things, but like Abraham he possessed humanity, buried under tons of hate, for sure, but then hatefulness is a human trait, something we're all capable of, and it consumes Cady. No one in the movie sought to deal with Cady as anything other than the Prince of Darkness he presented himself as, and if one watches Cady closely one can see him "testing" people to see if they were "low enough", which is to say worthy of the punishment he was all too eager to dole out.

Now what I'm proposing here is purely speculative, and even if half-successful the outcome would be far less compelling than Cape Fear; indeed, it wouldn't be Care Fear at all, more like How To Reform A Psychopath In Six Easy Lessons . Yet from watching the film closely, and especially listening to it, to Cady in particular, I think that his rehabilitation was a possibility, albeit a remote one, and something that didn't seem to occur to anyone in the film to even try, with maybe the exception of lawyer Grafton,--for a fee. To put Max Cady in a broader contxt, admittedly outside the scope of the film and its genre, he was a man who had once been as wounded as he is now wounding others. That's how he got that way, and from this he gained a tremendous negative strength, that of an avenging Dark Angel. He needed to be brought out of the darkness, but how? Well, this isn't what the movie is about. It's about how his darkness affects people of more decent disposition, and as such has aspects of a morality tale. Yet underneath this tale there's another potential story, a tale that might have been told, something that might have happened, had the world somewhere along the line given Max Cady a chance to join the human race. As he set himself outside normal humanity this would have been a tough sell, for sure, but it was still worth a try,--for the sake of the very humanity Cady was himself in the process of violating--as much in himself as others. I do sense a "subtext" in the movie, whether put there consciously or not: the Max Cadys of the world are made, not born.

[–] hobnob53 12 years ago

Well, that's an old debate, isn't it: nurture or nature?

I think Cady likely did have a rough upbringing that hardened him to others and made him want to lash out at the world. But I believe some people are simply born bad, to put it simplistically. How else explain that people from "good" backgrounds, treated well and even indulgently in life, nevertheless evince sociopathic tendencies, even murderous impulses? Or that some people from abusive or harsh backgrounds lead lives of goodness and charity toward others?

Whether Cady was simply one or the other, or whether his bad nature was made worse by a mistreated life, we don't know. But I see no evidence that he was a basically humane person, even deep underneath. Every bit of evidence we see in the movie shows Cady to be bullying, unrepentant, self-absorbed, without the slightest hint of restraint or remorse. The world revolves around him. He wants vengeance against Bowden for a specific, tangible reason, but what are his motives against others? Why not just go after Sam and not his family?

I believe he was a man essentially without humanity, and such people are born, not made. If you grow up under bad conditions, you may become hardened to others and assume negative character traits, but then some latent sense of humanity would indeed remain beneath, and would evince itself in some situations. Also, such a person would be less inclined to pick solely, or even very much, on the weak, but would more inclined to fight people on his own level, in part because of that latent sense of decency. And that person would never resort to cool, calm murder.

None of this, however, applies to Cady. That's why I believe that if Bowden had attempted to be civil to him, Cady would simply have taken it as a sign of weakness and quickly thrown it back in his face. I think he is simply and irredeemably bad.

I understand the types of people you describe up top, and how you negotiate what amount to social truces with them, basically by not challeneging them on their own emotional turf and accepting or turning aside their hostile or negative traits. I've had to do such things myself on occasion. But then none of the people you describe sounds like a Max Cady. What might work with nasty people, but ones essentially living within the outer bounds of the social contract, would not work on a full-fledged psychopath, which is why I think Cady -- perhaps regrettably -- really is beyond approach, understanding or redemption.

[–] telegonus 12 years ago

You may be right, Hobnob. I was just spinning some wheels. If there's a flaw i the way Max Cady is presented in the movie it's maybe that we never learn how he got the way he was, but as with my earlier suggestion, going into Cady's personal history would have made it another movie. Cady is presented as pure evil, may well be a born sociopath. We see no evidence to the contrary. His indifference to others is in evidence in our introduction to him, climbing the courthouse stairs, knocking over some books a woman is carrying, walking straight on past her, as if he didn't notice (of course he did), not even looking at her. That's a sociopath. Does it matter how he got that way? Cape Fear is a movie, not an essay on human nature or a study of the criminal mind, even as those issues are present. It aims to thrill and to frighten, as the second word in its title strongly implies. Better still, there is such a place. Cape Fear, I mean. I didn't even realize that the first time I saw the movie.

[–] hobnob53 12 years ago

Yes, I never realized there was an actual Cape Fear until well after I first saw the movie (which must have been when I was around 14 or 15). So it's a very apt title.

I'm not so sure the movie would have been substantially different had we learned more about Cady, and why he was the way he was. But clearly they didn't want to blunt the audience's fear or loathing of him by risking "explaining" anything about his bad nature.

I'll give him one very tiny exoneration, however. Cady didn't knock the books out of the woman's arms; she dropped them as she was walking down the stairs, just as he was starting to climb them. But his callousness, misogyny and self-absorption were on display when he not only refused to help pick them up, but didn't even glance down at them or the woman. I mean, how easy is it to avoid even looking at such a small incident, regardless of your reaction to it? That takes a special kind of mind.

You should see the remake sometime. It was one of those films that at first glance seems better than it really is, given its cast and director. But it doesn't wear well. It just spins out of control, becoming loonier and loonier, till it crosses into Friday-the-13th territory and becomes simply ludicrous...not to mention the characters are so stupid, unpleasant and unsympathetic that they leave a bad taste in the mouth, and you just don't care much what happens to them. Robert DeNiro plays Max Cady as if he were Freddie Kruger, and with about as much realism. One critic called it Martin Scorsese's worst movie, and I'm inclined to agree.

[–] telegonus 12 years ago

I was surprised when I read that Scorsese was planning to remake Cape Fear. It made no sense, especially as Scorsese's own career was in good shape then and he most of all ought to have realized that not only that this wasn't his kind of material but that the original, given its black and white, its channeling of the mood of the America of 1962, was near perfect for what it was when it was made. Also, it should have been obvious to Scorsese that what was "hidden", not shown, not directly referenced, due to the strict censorship of the time the original was made, was a huge factor in what made it so powerful, so gut wrenching, near pornographically engaging, which, if one were to add these elements in a remake, wouldn't work at all. It would be just another grisly thriller about a psycho on the loose.

That Robert Mitchum's casting as Max Cady was at least partly on account of his frightening portrayal of the mad back country preacher in the 1955 The Night Of the Hunter links Cape Fear to the earlier film, especially as Mitchum was, in both pictures, as stalker and abuser of women and children. I find the later film more effective, as it doesn't strive to be "art", as the earlier Charles Laughton directed, James Agee scripted film did. It's less daring and surely not so poetic as Hunter, achieves its genre goals quite nicely, while I feel that the Laughton-Agee picture strives too hard, verbally and visually, to rise to another level and that it doesn't get there. The fairy tale feel does work up to a point, and there's some striking imagery, but the more in your face Cape Fear has the advantage of sticking to its genre, not trying to rise to some other occasion (as it were).

[–] hobnob53 12 years ago

I really don't know which film -- Cape Fear or The Night of the Hunter -- I like better. But I tend to agree with your assessments of the two films' relative artistic merits. CF was a "basic", if you will, thriller -- in the sense that, as you say, it didn't strive to be self-consciously "artistic". It's a straightforward piece of movie-making, and as such more than delivers the goods, both as a thriller and as a shocking bit of drama that was, in its own small way, something of a landmark film. Its flaws notwithstanding, it never tried to be anything more than what it was.

TNOTH was made, in part, as "art", which ordinarily sends up a red flag to me: I have an aversion to directors who strive to create a "masterpiece", even if they have to keep hitting you over the head to make you see how meaningful it is. But that film doesn't offend me in this way. I find its very unreality fascinating, if at times a bit too mystical for the film's own good. (I have to say that the one part of that film that I've never really fathomed, and that annoys me no end, is the boy's sudden, tearful reaction to the capture of the preacher, and his subsequent refusal to testify against him, or identify him, on the witness stand. After all, this is the man who not only tried to kill him and his sister, but did kill his mother. I understand the kid may have broken down emotionally, but still, this doesn't ring true.)

I think Mitchum is somewhat less frightening in TNOTH because there was this overriding sense of unreality, even of poetry, which at times descended almost to cartoon level. (I love the deliberately exaggerated, outlandish shot of Mitchum chasing the two kids up the basement stairs, his arms outstretched to get them, just like in a Warner Bros. cartoon.) It insulates the audience somewhat from the extreme level of his brutality. It almost makes Mitchum's murderous stalking lyrical. But unltimately there is a bit too much mystification to the film for my tastes. Cape Fear doesn't rise to the level of most of Hunter's imagery, but it is more directly effective as a horror story.

Still, despite the similariites, the two films are different animals, so a direct comparison is a little unjust to both.

[–] ecarle 12 years ago

The name's ecarle. telegonus knows and might vouch for me, but I'm not inclined to over-contribute to a dialogue that was mighty fine read all the way down.

I love the original "Cape Fear" and I must admit I was rather excited when the remake was announced, if only because Scorsese WAS directing it, and quality name actors like Robert DeNiro, Nick Nolte and Jessica Lange were going to be in it. Not to mention: cameos for original "Cape Fear" stars Gregory Peck(here in Jack Krushen's bad-lawyer role), Robert Mitchum(here in Martin Balsam's police chief role) and Martin Balsam(in the role of the judge who rules for Cady and against Bowden in court after the gang assulat on Bowden fails.)

Scorsese's version was wonderful on one count: the reorchestration of Bernard Herrmann's score PLUS the use of much of Herrmann's unused "Torn Curtain" score for the houseboat/hurricane finale.

Spielberg purchased Cape Fear for remaking first, and was thinking of directing it. He decided instead to offer it to Scorsese, and this dialogue ensued:

Scorsese: The family was so white bread, I was rooting for Cady.
Spielberg: Then change the family!

And change them, Scorsese and his screenwriter did. Very much for the worse. Bowden became a cheater and Nick Nolte rather brilliantly played him as a great big coward. (Harrison Ford and Robert Redford turned down Bowden before Nolte said yes.) Indeed, the plot was changed so that Bowden had been Cady's attorney and allowed exculpatory evidence to go unfound. Jessica Lange overacted the sullen cuckolded wife to the max and Juliette Lewis was written as an idiot. The rather sexist new version of "Cape Fear," I felt, ended up being about how Nick Nolte convinced his idiotic and ungrateful wife and child that DeNiro was a psycho...and just in the nick of time.

All of the "improvements" of Scorsese's Cape Fear(which WAS a hit, the story was just too good and even DeNiro had fun with his version of Cady) only return us to the mighty fine "drawing of moral lines" that marked the 1962 version.

I've alluded elsehwere that the key scene is Cady telling Bowden -- in a bar lounge booth -- all the horrible sexual things he did to his ex-wife for helping Bowden send him to prison, and how now he's going to enact revenge on Bowden and HIS family.

Yes, Cady had a family, had kids. But we see far too much of his sexual sadist side to believe this guy was ever a nice husband and dad. Rather, "everybody's against him, and everybody must pay." No matter what his roots may have been, he's a dangerous, ruthless mad man. Hell, his opening ploy with Bowden is the kill the beloved family DOG...and refuse to 'fess up to it.

The wife and daughter that Scorsese so hated are perhaps one-dimensional, but they are DECENT, and the daughter isn't a moron in this one.

I'm a little intrigued that Gregory Peck seemed to "find" "Cape Fear." He was on a Universal-International contract. "Cape Fear" was perhaps brought to him(it was brought to Hitchcock, who turned it down.) It was rough, raw material. But once he decided upon it, Peck accepted it, produced it, and hired Robert Mitchum to steal the movie. Almost. We're still cheering Peck at the end.

I will here speak to the great Hitchcockican "frisson moment" when Peck is on the shore discovering the body of the dead cop in the water...just in time to see the houseboat drifting away(its rope untied from the dock)...with the unseen wife, daughter and CADY aboard...

And finally(for now):

The scene of Barrie Chase so insulting Robert Mitchum as "rock bottom" as a pick-up is complex, adult stuff. One wonders if Chase felt she could shame this guy into leaving her alone or just having sex with her...but that she enrages him to violence would seem like she might EXPECT that, too. She's a twisted sister. A masochist. But not so much of one to be a witness for the cops. SHE knows that Cady is lethal-dangerous.

This sequence in the Scorsese film is idiotic/misogynist. Scorsese cast his semi-attractive girlfriend in the part(I know, some think she's a beauty, but its in the eye of the beholder) and had her laugh hysterically and giggle like ...again, a moron...right up until the moment that DeNiro's Cady bites some of her cheek off -- EXACTLY the kind of 1991 "broad comedy into ultraviolence" overkill that was "in" around those years.

It was an odd effect: the 1962 "Cape Fear" ended up feeling like the sophisticated work of adults, the 1991 "Cape Fear" ended up feeling like teenage slasher filmmakers made it.

[–] hobnob53 12 years ago

Hi ecarle, and welcome to the thread. (I believe I've seen you around the boards on other film sites.)

Much of what you say echoes what I've talked about, so I'm glad to say I'm in virtually total agreement with your observations, especially on the '91 film, how Scorsese approached it, and its relative merits vs. those of '62.

The "teenage slasher" remark you close with mirrors what I wrote a post or two back, about how the film enters Friday-the-13th/Freddie Kruger territory, with DeNiro repeatedly seeming to have been killed, only to cartoonishly jump up and strike yet again, until that final moment of the upraised hand going under the water. (Which always reminded me of the end of The Son of Kong!) Most of that film is shock, not suspense, and I'm surprised Scorsese didn't seem to know the difference.

I admire Scorsese greatly, he's extraordinarily talented, and I like most of his movies. But he does have that dark side he needs to exercise (or exorcise), and by making the family so neurotic and stupid we lost any sympathy for them. The fact that he said he was rooting for Cady in the '62 film dismays me. I've seen a lot of films where I find the villain an almost sympathetic figure, but not Max Cady. I think that was a pretty bizarre and indefensible remark. But he did more than make the family dysfunctional -- he made them idiots. Of course, in Juliette Lewis's case, that's typecasting, since she seems in real life to be a halfwit, but this is a very disagreeable, unpleasant bunch. In fact, I'd be far more inclined to root for Cady in the remake than in the original. One doesn't get the sense the world would be a poorer place without the Bowden family of 1991. Scorsese got that exactly backward.

As for the B-girl role, in the '62 film Diane (Barrie Chase) clearly wanted Cady, she didn't want to have him leave her alone, she even went to the trouble of hooking up with him. She degraded him to degrade herself, and so make their sex more exciting. But she knew, or should have known, how dangerous this man was. On the other hand, in the remake the girl wasn't an idiot or a slut, just the ex-girlfriend Bowden had tossed aside, drunk and unhappy and conned by the seemingly nice Cady, who wasn't as overtly dangerous to her as Mitchum had been to Chase. That little surprise came later. But the nature of Cady's assault -- tearing out her cheek with his teeth and so on -- put us right back into teen-slasher territory, shocking but not suspenseful, and certainly not creative. (The actress in '91, by the way, was Ileana Douglas, who always reminded me of Marie Windsor, of Cat-Women of the Moon fame, among other B pictures. She was the granddaughter of Melvyn Douglas.)

Anyway, we're both on the same page, and your final thought is precisely on target.

[–] ecarle 12 years ago

Hi ecarle, and welcome to the thread. (I believe I've seen you around the boards on other film sites.)

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Thanks. I'll be discreet. I'm let people get used to me.

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Much of what you say echoes what I've talked about, so I'm glad to say I'm in virtually total agreement with your observations, especially on the '91 film, how Scorsese approached it, and its relative merits vs. those of '62.

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As you say, "we are on the same page" on this one. Very much so.

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The "teenage slasher" remark you close with mirrors what I wrote a post or two back, about how the film enters Friday-the-13th/Freddie Kruger territory, with DeNiro repeatedly seeming to have been killed, only to cartoonishly jump up and strike yet again, until that final moment of the upraised hand going under the water. (Which always reminded me of the end of The Son of Kong!) Most of that film is shock, not suspense, and I'm surprised Scorsese didn't seem to know the difference.

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In 1962, Robert Mitchum was not nominated for an Oscar for playing Max Cady. It would have been unheard of. In 1991, Robert DeNiro DID get an Oscar nom for playing Cady...ironically, it was Anthony Hopkins as Hanibal Lecter who beat DeNiro's psycho.

DeNiro is not bad as Max Cady, and some of his choices are fine...the hillbilly-yokel voice is a real invention, but leavened(as was Mitchum's version) by the self-taught lawyerly smarts of the monster. Though DeNiro was taut and muscled at the time, he didn't project the sexual sadism that Mitchum did and this hurt the scene with Ms. Douglas and rather defused DeNiro's Cady as a SEXUAL threat to Bowden's women. It seemed more like DeNiro was ...a slasher monster threat. And then he indeed starts coming to life again and gets his face melted into Freddy Kruegerdom and...unlike Mitchum's Cady...drowns to death.

We've been exposed to a few "remake villains" in recent years. DeNiro in for Mitchum in Cape Fear; Heath Ledger in for Nicholson as the Joker; Vince Vaughn in for Anthony Perkins in Psycho. A mixed bag. Vaughn was a total miscast bust against Perkins. Ledger got the Oscar that Nicholson did not, but died(Jack warned him...oh no), and I think the Ledger and Nicholson Jokers are of equal value, one "buried in the role," one "taken over by the superstar persona." Roberts Mitchum and DeNiro each gave us an entertaining villain, but I think Mitchum's was a more complex performance and certainly more daring for his repressed time.

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I admire Scorsese greatly, he's extraordinarily talented, and I like most of his movies. But he does have that dark side he needs to exercise (or exorcise), and by making the family so neurotic and stupid we lost any sympathy for them.

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Scorsese made his mark from the beginning, made some classics, and is one of the best "handlers of film" extant. Indeed, Scorsese's "handling of film" talents are well on display in "Cape Fear" as Herrmann's original music accompanies Scorsese's dynamic camera moves and shots.

But "Cape Fear" proved that a feverish talent like Martin Scorsese was evidently not the man at all to do a "straight thriller." Scorsese's "Cape Fear" devolves into a mess, keeps ignoring the thriller points, and turns many of the original's scenes(like Cady seducing and harming the bar pickup) into mush.

Now Scorsese didn't write the script for "Cape Fear," but I'll bet he ordered that that family be made so dysfunctional, and I expect he directed the odd performancef of Nick Nolte(scared rabbit), Jessica Lange(overacting sullen), and Juliette Lewis(praised to the eyeballs and Oscar nommed, but still pretty dumb.)

I often cite the great scene in the first Cape Fear in which Cady, in a lounge booth, lays out his sordid deeds and horrific plans to Bowden, who strikes back with verbal outrage and thunder. Scorsese didn't have much interest in this scene in the remake. Its shorter, Nolte plays it chicken, not heroic, and DeNiro fast-talks lines that Mitchum laid out like slow hot molasses. Just different.

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The fact that he said he was rooting for Cady in the '62 film dismays me. I've seen a lot of films where I find the villain an almost sympathetic figure, but not Max Cady. I think that was a pretty bizarre and indefensible remark. But he did more than make the family dysfunctional -- he made them idiots. Of course, in Juliette Lewis's case, that's typecasting, since she seems in real life to be a halfwit, but this is a very disagreeable, unpleasant bunch. In fact, I'd be far more inclined to root for Cady in the remake than in the original. One doesn't get the sense the world would be a poorer place without the Bowden family of 1991. Scorsese got that exactly backward.

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I agree with that whole paragraph. It seemed "funny" that Scorsese would root for Cady (a pervert and a borderline pedophile) in the original, and vapid that Spielberg(of all people!) would say: so change the family, thereby making them WORSE. Depressing with regards to both men but remember: Scorsese and Spielberg were a bit messed up growing up, and are "arrested" in their adult desires,(as shown in some of their movies, at least.)

And yeah: I think Scorsese created a family in his remake that DID put you more in favor of Cady this time. Pretty sick, that.

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As for the B-girl role, in the '62 film Diane (Barrie Chase) clearly wanted Cady, she didn't want to have him leave her alone, she even went to the trouble of hooking up with him. She degraded him to degrade herself, and so make their sex more exciting. But she knew, or should have known, how dangerous this man was.

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She rolled the dice. Evidently, the worst she ever rolled it. No matter how "experienced" she seemed, she tells the cops, Bowden and the private eye that there's no way she'll testify against a man like Max Cady. "She's met her match." Probably became a nun.

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On the other hand, in the remake the girl wasn't an idiot or a slut, just the ex-girlfriend Bowden had tossed aside, drunk and unhappy and conned by the seemingly nice Cady, who wasn't as overtly dangerous to her as Mitchum had been to Chase. That little surprise came later. But the nature of Cady's assault -- tearing out her cheek with his teeth and so on -- put us right back into teen-slasher territory, shocking but not suspenseful, and certainly not creative. (The actress in '91, by the way, was Ileana Douglas, who always reminded me of Marie Windsor, of Cat-Women of the Moon fame, among other B pictures. She was the granddaughter of Melvyn Douglas.)

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Ileana Douglas DOES look like Marie Windsor, and DOES have a certain "look" that can be attractive, but it can go the other way, too(those bug eyes) and I found her playing of ex-girlfriend of Bowden to be "fingernails on the chalkboard" irritating. DeNiro's goofy playback to her ("Mebbe ah'll cut ya up into a thousand little biddy pieces")...just juvenile. This is not an adult scene...and the veer into face eating(jeez, that's in the news RIGHT NOW) strikes me as Scorsese sledgeahmmering the horror that Thompson got with suggestion.

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Anyway, we're both on the same page, and your final thought is precisely on target.

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Indeed. Thanks for the talk.

[–] TheCineSinge 12 years ago

I definitely agree about the ending; it felt quite heavy-handed. It was a bit difficult to work out exactly what was going on and where and that took away from the tension that should have been running so high. Script issue, as you said.

I would also like to bring into question the female roles in this film. Both Peck's wife and daughter seem to be represented as a little weak. None of them really have a say in the events and they leave it all up to the husband to sort things out. Of course, it involved him directly but at times, the representation of women seemed a bit off.

Apart from that, I see little fault with this film. Mitchum is scary despite what I've heard from others. The film is paced well; slow, mostly, with short glimpses of what is to come before we get to the faster paced ending.

I like it but I'd go with an 8/10. Not quite a 9.

[–] telegonus 12 years ago

Thanks for the reply. The female characters weren't well developed in the film and this makes it sort of a "guy flick", while some suspense thrillers with similar themes are more gal-friendly. This ain't one of them.

One does expect more of a specifically dramatic payoff in the confrontation between the Peck and Mitchum characters at the end, and while they do their underwater fighting there isn't the catharsis there ought to be in a film of this sort. Peck plays his usual good liberal, fine for To Kill a Mockingbird, not so great for Cape Fear. Still, overall, a highly effective and chilling film.