The Film Foundation Restoration Screening Room Resource Guide for
CAUGHT (dir. Max Ophuls, 1949) and FORCE OF EVIL (dir. Don Abraham Polonsky, 1948)
CAUGHT was presented in The Film Foundation Restoration Screening Room in March 2023 in partnership with Paramount Pictures. FORCE OF EVIL was presented in The Film Foundation Restoration Screening Room in March 2023 in partnership with UCLA Film & Television Archive and Paramount Pictures.
Table of Contents
1) Film Descriptions
2) Special Features
-Andreas-Benjamin Seyfert and Lutz Bacher in Conversation
-FORCE OF EVIL Before/After Restoration Demo
3) EXPLORE Page Materials
-The Film Foundation on Letterboxd
4) Live Screening Commentary Script
CAUGHT is the third film the great Max Ophüls would make in America and it's a dramatic and sometimes terrifying examination of domestic life in the 1940s. He makes the most of his terrific cast—James Mason, Barbara Bel Geddes, and Robert Ryan—to tell the story of a young fashion model who falls in love too quickly and soon finds herself a prisoner in her new husband's estate. Mason plays a young doctor who gives Bel Geddes's wife hope of escape, but Ryan's tyrannical millionaire husband—based on Howard Hughes—doesn't want to let her go. Lee Garmes's striking cinematography creates an unforgettable mood to match the dark melodrama.
The 4K restoration of CAUGHT was completed using the best available elements, a 35mm nitrate fine grain for the picture and the 35mm nitrate optical sound track positive and 35mm re-recorded optical sound track negative for the audio. CAUGHT was restored by Paramount Pictures with special thanks to Martin Scorsese and The Film Foundation.
FORCE OF EVIL, moving like a runaway train, follows the unscrupulous scheming of New York lawyer Joe Morse (John Garfield). By consolidating a numbers racket, Joe has the unseemly opportunity to make it big by teaming up with ruthless gangster Ben Tucker (Roy Roberts). The only hindrance to this plan is Joe's brother, Leo (Thomas Gomez), who refuses to implicate his small outside-the-law operation and its dedicated and loyal employees. The moody plot of this tense and widely respected film noir is a scathing indictment of monopoly capitalism and its victims. From one terse and gripping scene to another, Joe presses his brother to accept the looming inevitability that can't be reversed.
The 4K restoration of FORCE OF EVIL was completed using the 35mm nitrate fine grain, 35mm nitrate composite dupe negative, and 35mm nitrate track positive. Image scans and audio files were provided by Paramount and the digital restoration was completed by Roundabout Entertainment. The audio restoration was done at Audio Mechanics. Restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive and The Film Foundation. Funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.
Andreas-Benjamin Seyfert and Lutz Bacher in Conversation
FORCE OF EVIL Before/After Restoration Demo
CAUGHT
TCM Tribute to Robert Ryan via YouTube
Talking Film: Lee Garmes, Stanley Cortez, Haskell Wexler & Victor Kemper on Cinematography via YouTube
Interview with James Mason via YouTube
Robert Parrish, the editor of CAUGHT, on The Ed Sullivan Show w/the cast of FIRE DOWN BELOW (1957) via YouTube
FORCE OF EVIL
Abraham Polonsky Oral History via The Television Academy
TCM Noir Alley Introduction to FORCE OF EVIL by Eddie Muller via YouTube
TCM Sydney Pollack Introduction to FORCE OF EVIL via YouTube
An excerpt from Thom Andersen's 1996 documentary "Red Hollywood" via YouTube
"The Blacklisting of John Garfield" via TCM
TCM Star of the Month: Actor John Garfield via YouTube
1985 interview with Marie Windsor via YouTube
CAUGHT
Max Ophuls in the Hollywood Studios, Lutz Bacher, Rutgers University Press, 2006
The Lives of Robert Ryan, J.R. Jones, Wesleyan University Press, 2015
Growing Up in Hollywood, Robert Parrish, Little Brown & Co, 1988
FORCE OF EVIL
Body and Soul: The Story of John Garfield, Larry Swindell, Echo Point Books & Media, 2016
A Very Dangerous Citizen: Abraham Polonsky and the Hollywood Left, University of California Press, Los Angeles, 2001.
CAUGHT
"‘An outstanding film director & a good European’: an interview w/Max Ophüls" for Sight and Sound
"Prisons of Gender and a Generation" by J. Hoberman for The New York Times
"Master of Motion and Emotion" by Phillip Lopate for The New York Times
"Gilded Age: Robert Ryan in CAUGHT" by Mark Asch for The Criterion Collection
"The Ophuls Shot" for The Criterion Collection
1951 Interview with Barbara Bel Geddes for The New Yorker
"New Star Barbara Bel Geddes" from Life Magazine
FORCE OF EVIL
FORCE OF EVIL by Mike Robins for Senses of Cinema
Abraham Polonsky at TCM
CAUGHT
Desert Island Discs: James Mason
Audio Interview with Cinematographer Lee Garmes
FORCE OF EVIL
Abraham Polonsky discusses the making of his film FORCE OF EVIL and the Hollywood blacklist
The Film Foundation Letterboxd
Edited and Directed by Robert Parrish
CAUGHT (1949) + FORCE OF EVIL (1948)
Live Screening Commentary Script
3/13/23
Welcome to The Film Foundation Restoration Screening Room! Tonight we’re screening a double feature: CAUGHT (1949, d. Max Ophüls) and FORCE OF EVIL (1948, Abraham Polonsky).
You can stay with us here in the chat to learn more about the films as you watch or you can view the films full screen on-demand at 7pm.
In this chat mode the screening is live and picture controls (rewind/fast forward/pause) will not be available. If you miss anything or need to take a break, that functionality is available when watching on-demand.
Thanks for being here and we hope you enjoy our live commentary. We also encourage you to share your thoughts on the film as we go, making this a communal virtual viewing experience!
CAUGHT
00:00:00 - 00:15:00
CAUGHT was the third film Max Ophüls made in Hollywood after working in his native Germany and in France earlier in his career. We asked Lutz Bacher, the author of “Max Ophuls in the Hollywood Studios,” about what makes an Ophüls film special and he said:
“In a single word, fluidity. Max’s style is incredibly fluid and all his stylistic urgings lead him to a confluence of movement and expression.”
To learn more about the career of Ophüls and the production history of CAUGHT be sure to watch our complete interview with historian Lutz Bacher and Ophüls’ great-grandson, PhD candidate Andreas-Benjamin Seyfert, available on this page.
CAUGHT was the fourth film that star Barbara Bel Geddes would appear in, having started her screen career only two years earlier in Anatole Litvak’s THE LONG NIGHT (1947). She would eventually work with Alfred Hitchcock on VERTIGO (1958) and, along with her work on television’s DALLAS, it’s how many remember her today.
00:15:00 - 00:30:00
Actor Robert Ryan plays Smith Ohlrig. He got his start in theater before he signed a contract with Paramount in 1939. He had a great and prolific career in the movies, working right up until his death in 1973.
Ryan was married to one woman (Jessica Cadwalader) his entire life. She was a Quaker and her pacifism inspired Ryan to be an activist alongside his work as an actor. They lived in the famous Dakota in New York City and eventually sublet their apartment to John Lennon and Yoko Ono!
To learn more about Ryan’s film work, be sure to click on the below link to The Film Foundation’s Letterboxd account:
https://letterboxd.com/tff/list/starring-robert-ryan/
00:30:00 - 00:45:00
The editor of CAUGHT is Robert Parrish, who had a very interesting career in Hollywood. He started out as a child actor—you can see him in Charlie Chaplin’s CITY LIGHTS (1931)—before eventually diving into the editing field working with none other than John Ford. Parrish would also go on to direct his own films, most notably two noirs he made in 1951, THE MOB and CRY DANGER.
He wrote a wonderful memoir about his time in the film industry called “Growing Up in Hollywood,” which is linked to on this page. You can also read Letterboxd list that details all of the incredible films that he worked on:
https://letterboxd.com/tff/list/edited-and-directed-by-robert-parrish/
00:45:00 - 01:00:00
In 1916, cinematographer Lee Garmes started out as an assistant in the paint department at Thomas Ince Studios before transitioning to photographing films in 1918. Early on he worked with Rex Ingram and Josef von Sternberg, whom he collaborated with often, winning an Academy Award for their work on SHANGHAI EXPRESS in 1933.
To learn more about Lee Garmes’s incredible contributions to film, be sure to visit The Film Foundation’s Letterboxd account:
https://letterboxd.com/tff/list/shot-by-lee-garmes/
01:00:00 - 01:15:00
Director Paul Thomas Anderson is a huge fan of Max Ophüls. In an interview with the Criterion Collection he talked about how and when he first started watching Ophüls films:
“I think I had been watching films that Sam Fuller had done, and I was reading how Sam Fuller was so good at these elaborate tracking shots, but he was nothing compared to the master of the shot. So, it led me to find everything I could by Max Ophüls."
To hear Anderson talk more about his love of Ophüls work, find a link to Criterion’s interview with him below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oumV7GgPyfE
01:15:00 - 01:30:00
The digital restoration of CAUGHT was done by the team at Paramount. Senior vice president of archives Andrea Kalas spoke with us about working on the restoration, what she learned while researching the film, and her thoughts about some of the film's themes. Kalas noted that the author of the source material came from a female author named Libby Block:
“There is a very feminist sort of perspective in CAUGHT. It is about, in a lot of ways, a woman who is caught and that thread goes all the way through it. I was fascinated to see where that origin story came from.”
Our complete interview with Andrea Kalas is available on this page.
Thank you so much for joining us and please stick around for the presentation of FORCE OF EVIL. CAUGHT was restored by Paramount Pictures with special thanks to Martin Scorsese. The 4K restoration was completed using the best available elements, a 35mm nitrate fine grain for the picture and the 35mm nitrate optical sound track positive and 35mm re-recorded optical sound track negative for the audio.
FORCE OF EVIL
00:00:00 - 00:15:00
Star John Garfield was born and raised in New York City and grew up in the downtown Yiddish Theater district. His childhood, spent mostly in poverty, was hard but an educator at his school took an interest in him and encouraged him to act.
He became very involved in the New York Theater scene before eventually signing a contract with Warner Brothers—he had turned them down multiple times over contract issues. In Hollywood he played rough with the studios, demanding challenging films, and worked with many greats—Michael Curtiz, Howard Hawks, Robert Rossen, Elia Kazan, Jean Negulesco, and Delmer Daves, among others.
In 1951, Garfield was forced to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), where he refused to name names, which made it near impossible for him to find work in Hollywood. Many think that the stress of this led to his untimely death in 1952 at the age of 39.
To learn more about the films Garfield was able to make before his tragic death, be sure to visit The Film Foundation’s Letterboxd account:
https://letterboxd.com/tff/list/starring-john-garfield/
00:15:00 - 00:30:00
Director Abraham Polonsky’s career was also negatively influenced by the HUAC trials. He started out writing essays and his start in Hollywood was as a screenwriter, including his work on another film starring John Garfield, Robert Rossen’s BODY AND SOUL (1947). FORCE OF EVIL would be Polonsky’s directorial debut and like Garfield, he would refuse to testify before HUAC, which limited his career.
Polosnky recorded an extensive oral history which is available via the Archive of American Television. Of his decision not to testify he said:
“I did the right thing, that’s enough for me.”
You can find a link to his complete oral history below:
https://interviews.televisionacademy.com/interviews/abraham-polonsky?clip=1#interview-clips
00:30:00 - 00:45:00
Actress Marie Windsor plays Edna Tucker. Known as the “Queen of the B’s,” Windsor primarily acted in smaller genre films, many of them film noirs like FORCE OF EVIL. She was unusually tall for a Hollywood actress and at one point claimed she was forced to bend at the knees when acting alongside John Garfield. Her career was a varied one, with early work as a telephone operator, time spent on the stage, many films on the silver screen, and an eventual transition to television.
Despite playing sultry femme fatales, Windsor was a lifelong Mormon and politically conservative. She acted until the age of 72 and passed away from congestive heart failure less than ten years later at the age of 81.
To learn more about Windsor’s prolific career as the “Queen of the B’s,” be sure to visit The Film Foundation’s Letterboxd account:
https://letterboxd.com/tff/list/starring-marie-windsor/
Also, look out for her in the Restoration Screening Room this summer in a beautiful tru-color Western called HELLFIRE! (1949).
00:45:00 - 01:00:00
The shadowy lighting and paranoia inducing photography in FORCE OF EVIL comes courtesy of the great cinematographer George Barnes. Barnes worked in the silent era and continued through the early 50s. He was nominated for eight Academy Awards and collaborated with many directors, including Alfred Hitchcock, Henry King, Joseph Losey, Leo McCarey, Mitchell Leisen, and Cecil B, DeMille.
Barnes was married seven times, including to actress Joan Blondell between 1933 and 1936. They met on the set of THE GREEKS HAD A WORD FOR THEM (1932) and he shot many of her films in that period, including FOOTLIGHT PARADE (1933), BROADWAY BAD (1933), GOODBYE AGAIN (1933), DAMES (1934), SMARTY (1934), HE WAS HER MAN (1934), BROADWAY GONDOLIER (1935), TRAVELING SALESLADY (1935), and more.
To learn more about Barnes’s career as a cinematographer, be sure to visit The Film Foundation’s Letterboxd account:
https://letterboxd.com/tff/list/shot-by-george-barnes/
01:00:00 - 01:15:00
The digital restoration of FORCE OF EVIL was done by the team at UCLA Film & Television Archive. Their head of preservation Jillian Borders spoke with us about working on the restoration, with a special focus on how they worked with the audio. She said:
“A big thing that we were able to do was the audio restoration for the new version. [...] The audio engineers at Audio Mechanics were able to use four total sources—the track positive, plus two other nitrate dupe negatives that we had in the collection, and an acetate dupe neg. Then they had to cobble together the best sections of the sound and kind of weave them together.”
Our complete interview with Jillian Borders is available on this page.
01:15:00 - end
Thank you so much for joining us tonight! FORCE OF EVIL was restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive. Funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation. The 4K restoration was completed using the 35mm nitrate fine grain, 35mm nitrate composite dupe negative, and 35mm nitrate track positive. Image scans and audio files were provided by Paramount and the digital restoration was completed by Roundabout Entertainment. The audio restoration was done at Audio Mechanics.
We look forward to seeing you next month on Monday, April 10th for a screening of Mario Soffici’s PRISIONEROS DE LA TIERRA (1939).
