Skip to main content

Cape Fear (1962)

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Cape Fear. Feature film. (1962, 105 mins) IMDB

...a classic is born...

C

APE FEAR is one of those film I watched growing up--at least once or twice. For the few who haven't seen it, you've probably heard about it.

If you've ever read about film structure, about three acts, about raising the stacks etc. then use this film as an example. It's all there. It includes making the bad guy as bad as possible and Mitchum plays him perfectly. Not many actors could have played the role as well as he did.

The story and premise are straight forward. Mitchum just got out of jail. He spent eight years in jail because Peck was a witness to his crime and testified against him. Mitchum's holding a grudge. A big grudge.

When they reunite, the suspense and terror begin. What is Mitchum going to do to Peck and his family? How can our hero fight back?

He works with the police, but there isn't much they can do because he hasn't committed any crimes. The private detective Peck hires can't dig up any dirt. Bribing Mitchum doesn't work either.

As it should be, Peck devises a scheme to lure Mitchum to a remote area in Cape Fear where the showdown takes place. The outcome known, we watch the final struggle with interest because we want to see Peck prevail even when we know he will.

An early scene in the film shows Mitchum is the bad guy. He's walking up a flight of stairs inside a courthouse. A woman, carrying a stack of books, is walking down and past him. She's struggling to carry this load and drops one of the books. Struggles to bend over and pick it. Mitchum hears it happen, knows the woman could use a hand, but keeps on walking up the steps and ignores her. There's not one word of dialogue and yet it tells a great deal. That is filmmaking.

I always that the name of the film was made up, but according to Peck in a interview on the DVD, he wanted a place name for the title and found it on a map. Odd name for a place. He reasoned films with titles based on places (e.g., Casablanca) did well. It didn't turn out that way. While the film is recognized today, it didn't do well when it was released with the result that Pecks' producing career was over.

Posted 2009/04/11 at 19h37ET in Movie Commentary.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

If Only We Could Agree

Monday, June 11, 2012 ... have you been accused of misspelling a word you know is correct ... S usanne O’Leary wrote an interesting article on her experience with the variations of the English language in different countries. You know the obvious ones like colour with or without a “u” but less obvious ones like travelled versus traveled. Growing up in Sweden she learnt English in school—the UK variation. In publishing her books, she read reviews where she was criticized for improper spelling. False accusations as it turns out. While I write tire and cozy, it’s not incorrect to write tyre or cosy. Same language. Both accepted. Just different. You can read her write-up here along with the numerous comments posted by readers. I found it interesting, but that’s me. As a Canadian I deal with this issue everyday. I feel her pain when she’s criticized for something based on ignorance. No fun. I was told by a boss that “data are” isn’t correct. It should be “data is.” Read
2 comments
Read more

Days 9-108: Writing a Novel—The Deep Blue Hold

November 25th, 2016 to March 5, 2017 Note: Unedited writings from my notebook for this novel. Square bracket items represent added comments. At 15:53 Office ... And so began a three month odyssey away from writing this novel, The Deep Blue Hold. ... W herein I try to explain why I stopped working on this novel. The shortest answer is I gave up. The short explanation is I struggle with mental health issues (MDD, GAD, PTSD) that paralyse me at times. When it happens, I’m not able to do much of anything. Don’t want to do anything and that includes things one might expect to enjoy. For a while I spent time trying to create some thirty-second videos that would play a word puzzle like a crossword. Here’s the clue. Here’s the blank spaces. And after an interval, one of the letters would appear until all the letters appear. A bit of a crossword puzzle in that sometimes you come to a word where crossover words give you certain letters and you have to fill in the rest. A
Post a Comment
Read more

Words: BONE—GONE—LOAN—BOAN

Friday, March 31, 2017 You’d think BONE would rhyme with GONE but no. This is the English language after all. But BONE does rhyme with LOAN so we’ll spell it BOAN. It will take some time to update all the existing writings but it can be done. Meanwhile, if you smash up your car, the insurance company will allow you to get a LOANER and if you happen to meet the right person you may get a BOANER. boan Post comments on facebook page Posted 2017/03/31 at 17h28ET in Words .
Post a Comment
Read more