Director: Basil Dearden
Writers: Jack Whittingham, Paul L. Stein
Starring: Jean Simmons, David Farrar, James Donald
Year: 1950
Duration: 83 mins
BBFC Certification: PG
This month, StudioCanal’s Vintage Classics line continue their quest of exhuming and restoring British director Basil Dearden’s filmography with the release of the 1950 melodrama/thriller Cage of Gold. As a director, Dearden rarely fails to impress, with his filmography being one of the most impressive and varied in all of British cinema. Cage of Gold, a taut and entertaining Ealing Studios tale of love, lust and betrayal, proves to be another example of the director’s unarguable talent, which once again begs the question as to why Dearden has never been as highly venerated as some of his peers and contemporaries.
Set in post war London, Cage of Gold opens with Judith (Jean Simmons) a well to do painter and artist, in a happy relationship with Alan (James Donald) a young doctor who is being pressured into taking over his father’s surgery. Their happiness is fractured, however, with the re-emergence of Bill (David Farrar), Judith’s charmingly sly ex-boyfriend who jiltered her during the war. Now back on the scene, he slowly begins to seduce Judith yet again…yet does Alan genuinely have honest intentions or are his motives more avaricious than amorous?
On paper, Cage of Gold has all the ingredients to be a rather soapy and underwhelming melodrama, yet writer Jack Whittingham (working off an original story by Paul L. Stein) crafts something altogether more tense and thrilling out of the bones of rather conventional ingredients. Perhaps reflecting the fact that Whittingham later went on to be co-writer of the 1965 James Bond classic Thunderball, Cage of Gold frequently offers as much as study in tension as it does in character.
Out of the three main stars, it is Farrar who steals the limelight. Offering a striking contrast to his vulnerable, damaged performance in another recently released Vintage Classic (Powell and Pressburger’s The Small Back Room) in Cage of Gold he turns the Machiavellian Alan into an eminently nasty, arrogant villain who makes the blood boil whenever he appears on screen.
Simmons turns in a decent if unremarkable performance. Already a star in Britain by this point (having featured in both David Lean’s Great Expectations and Powell and Pressburger’s Black Narcissus, yet still a few years away from Hollywood stardom with 1955’s Guys and Dolls) Simmons captures Judith’s dilemma and indecisions rather well, carrying on throughout with a determined sense of tragic dignity, yet she seems to lessen slightly in the shadow of Farrar’s devious, domineering presence. The same can be said for James Donald, who is saddled with a rather bland, underwritten character whose love for Judith is unwavering and therefore ever so slightly uninteresting.
Yet in Dearden’s capable hands, Cage of Gold is never less than a gripping and absorbing watch. Helped along with cinematography by the great Douglas Slocombe, Dearden offers up some fantastic moments and set pieces. An early montage that captures two characters falling in love has a visual intuitiveness that feels as if it has been ripped from a silent movie, while later scenes drenched in fog evoke a grim, sombre atmosphere. One stunning bravura shot towards the end of the film, where Dearden sends his camera right down the barrel of a gun, take the breath away. At times like this, Cage of Gold is never less than thrilling.
While the film may be hampered by a slightly too convenient twist at the end, ensuring that everything falls a little too neatly into place, Cage of Gold is nevertheless a thoroughly entertaining combination of melodrama and thriller. Helped along by a wonderfully nasty turn by David Farrar and Dearden’s typically effective and stylish direction, this is a great slice of post war British cinema that certainly earns its place in StudioCanal’s adroitly curated Vintage Classics lineup.
Film:
Cage of Gold is being released on Blu Ray, DVD and Digital on the 16th September. While the film has been subject to a new 4K restoration, some print damage is evident throughout, which means that the picture quality here falls slightly short of the usual high standards seen in the Vintage Classics line. Audio is clear and legible.
The only key extra is a 10 minute featurette about the fashions and costumes used in Cage of Gold, particularly focusing on Jean Simmons, who we are told used quite a lot of our own personal wardrobe throughout the film. A stills gallery is also included.
Disc/Extras:
