CAPE FEAR (1962)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
Gregory Peck is Samuel Bowden, an illustrious lawyer with a devoted wife (Polly Bergen) and a simply delightful daughter (Loni Martin), who loves her puppy dog. What we are seeing is a perfectly goody-goody family that would be at home on "Leave it to Beaver." Before long, an ex-convict named Max Cady (Robert Mitchum) begins stalking Sam. Apparently, Sam had been a witness and testified against Cady who had attacked some girl and served a long jail sentence as a result. Cady is mad and wants revenge and, with oozing menace, suggests that he will go after Sam's wife and daughter.
"Cape Fear" is essentially a standard crime thriller with overtones of noir in its shadowy black-and-white look. Noir often involves fatalistic heroes and Sam is one to an extent - he and his family cannot escape Cady's wrath. Sam can't do anything legally since Cady is always one step ahead of him on the legal meter. After Sam's daughter is supposedly chased by Cady and and is almost run over by a car, Sam calls on a private detective and hires men to beat some sense into this relentless madman. That does not work either and, finally, the family relocates to a houseboat at the Cape Fear River to trap Cady and kill him.
One major difference between the original and the Scorsese remake is Samuel Bowden's moral character. Peck's Bowden is a righteous man who does take the law into his own hands and is practically disbarred from law practice. Still, there is no way one can find his actions immoral since he has to protect his family. All Sam did was rat on Cady for a crime he witnessed. Cady wants revenge for all the years he was in prison, period. In Scorsese's film, Sam Bowden is a flawed man who did not protect his client, Cady, and had evidence that would have resulted in a shorter prison term for the convict. Essentially, Bowden committed an immoral act by withholding the evidence and has to pay the price. It is the difference of thirty years in film time and how attitudes and values have changed.
If I was alive in 1962 and saw this film, I would have scoffed at the depiction of this wholesome family with nary a trace of negativity. Just two years prior, we had Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho," which featured a less than wholesome heroine at its forefront (Janet Leigh) whose sins are washed away during a brutal shower murder. "Psycho" cut the innocence of the 1950's with its brutality and shocking depiction of a clever psychopath. "Cape Fear" wants to pretend that innocence prevails over evil anyday. Somehow, Cady's evil seems less than cunning or stinging with poison the way one would hope. I never got the impression that Cady's attacks were as severe as one would think (with the exception of the unseen violence towards a club girl). The moment where Bowden's daughter runs around the school thinking Cady is chasing her when, in fact, he was standing outside the school gates the whole time ruins the tension a tad. He instills fear in them but it is not as viscerally felt as it should have been. A title like "Cape Fear" should be ablaze with tension and thrills. I mostly got chills through Robert Mitchum's splendid performance but nothing more. J. Lee Thompson tends to hold back often, which may be a result of the Production Code that would not even allow the word "rape" to be said in a film.
On the plus side, the film is taut for the most part and has decent performances by Martin Balsam as the chief of police, Telly Savalas in pre-"Kojak" mode as the private detective, and Jack Gruschen as Cady's righteous lawyer who is dismayed by Bowden's actions. But it is a delight to see Robert Mitchum as the sleazy, muscular, sarcastic Max Cady going against the stolid, serious-minded Gregory Peck. The finale at the houseboat is especially stirring. When you see Cady slapping and smearing himself against poor Polly Bergen, you can feel some real heat and tension and, yes, a literal slap across familial innocence.
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