strong pentitentiary drama with good supporting cast directed by Jules Dassin I recommend it heartily on a night when TCM is finding liberty behind bars, a breakout, a pin-up girl that all the boys can love, or a dream of revenge. Just finished watching "Caged" set in a woman's prison, where Eleanor Parker gets her hair clipped and and goes from being a sweet innocent accessory in a gas station holdup to a tough broad smoking cigarettes between two muscular gents in the back of a sleek sedan, and now Burt Lancaster is getting out of solitary and coming up against Hume Cronyn playing a sadistic prison guard who listens to Wagner while beating up a prisoner. The thematic conflict in both cases is between stern disciplinarians and decent but weak or overmatched wardens who think the inmates should be treated like human beings not animals.
